Thank you @Lucasam. How would I do this exactly? I do not see the export to markdown option (neither in Zotero nor Better BibTex menu) when I select several items.
Hello! I am new here, so my apologies if anything I am saying is a stupid question or has already been discussed.
I am a PhD student and Zotero + Obsidian is a crucial part of my workflow. When taking notes in Pdfs in Zotero on my iPad, I sometimes include brackets [[example]] or **things I want to be in bold** in my commentary. However, when, after using Zotfile, I export those notes from my computer into my Obsidian Vault from , there seems to be slashes which Zotero automatically adds between the brackets ([/[) which avoid the internal links happening in Obsidian. Is there any way in which I could fix this? Those slashes did not appear in the notes generated by Zotfile, so I presume it has to do with the export from Zotero to Markdown.
Thank you very much and sorry if this appears in another discussion. As I was saying, I am just new. Cheers!
@jeronimoayesta do you use Obsidian's BibnotesFormatter plugin? It automatically extracts zotero notes and thus annotation extractions. I recently switched from the obsidian citations plugin and BibnotesFormatter more advanced.
Apologies for the slow response (it may have been answered in the many other posts in this thread!), but to your questions:
Q. How did you get the live links added? All that was exported was the text of the note, no live links to Zotero.
A. By default, Export item should have a box for 'Export Zotero links'. it may depend on the software you're importing too, but it worked fine for both Craft and Ulysses.
B. Also, does this feature work only for notes? Is it able to also work for highlights and the notes that are added to the highlight?
A. At least in Ulysses, you can drag and drop individual annotations directly in with the links.
@dstillman It would be great if "Add note from Annotation" could be triggered automatically, either upon changes or at regular intervals or something like that.
@dstillman A quickcopy using Ctrl-Shift-C would not keep the backlink to item and pdf for me, only the plain text. Is this designed to happen or a bug? I am using version 6.0.9-beta.2+deabf3f04.
@arthur_fyc: Zotero always includes item/PDF backlinks in the plain-text Markdown, both for notes and for individual annotations. There are no exceptions.
But if you're pasting into a rich-text editor, you'll get the rich-text output, which doesn't currently include backlinks, rather than the Markdown this thread is about, which does.
If you're using Obsidian, you can change a setting to keep it from using the rich-text version. Alternatively, you can force Obsidian to use the plain text each time by Shift-dragging. (That's purely an Obsidian thing. It has no effect on Zotero itself.) There might be a keyboard shortcut to force Obsidian to paste the plain text as well.
We plan to add an option to include backlinks in the rich-text note export in a future version. They're not enabled by default because we suspect rich text is more likely to be used for sharing, where the links wouldn't be appropriate, and the fact that the URLs are hidden makes it hard to realize that these are local-only links. But in any case, this thread is about Markdown, which includes the links.
@dpanchuk mdnotes has been updated to work with Zotero 6 (but still seems buggy). It has the advantage of consistently exporting the note metadata ("related" and "tags") which so far I have found hit and miss with Zotero note export.
Hopefully the feature of bulk export will be incorporated into the Zotero note export also.
@dstillman Thanks for the great work! I found that the conversion from '\' to '\\' spoils the markdown writing with LaTex math in the note editor. If I write a latex equation like: $$x_1, x_2 = \frac{-b^2c}{2a}$$ in Zotero note editor, the export to markdown result is $$x_1, x_2 = \\frac{-b^2c}{2a}$$, which is a wrong latex.
The direct copy works well, while the export does not convert it right.
So far its working well for me, except that the zotero back links are "inversed"? The (Author, title, page) zotero link after the annotation reveals the pdf in Zotero, while the (pdf) zotero link hooks to the highlight / note in the pdf. I feel like it makes more sense the other way around?
I would also love to see some template / basic editing support so that we could format the markdown.
I've noticed the same thing as @tillmanjex. The (Author, year, page) link links only to the PDF, but the (pdf) link links to the actual annotation on whichever page it is. Clearly those need to be corrected.
While this thread is about Markdown, many people using Obsidian with Quick Copy have mistakenly thought they were pasting Markdown when they were actually pasting rich text, which didn't previously include zotero:// links via Quick Copy. It's now possible to enable those links for rich-text Quick Copy rather than changing Obsidian settings or holding down Shift to force Obsidian to use the plain-text Markdown.
Post to the linked thread with any questions on the new settings.
Also, there seems to be some confusion above about the two different links:
The (Author, year, page) link links only to the PDF
This isn't the case. That's the citation, and it links to the parent item, not the PDF. You can insert citations directly in the note editor, including for items without PDFs. If you add an annotation, you get both a citation link and an annotation link in the Quick Copy output. But as I say in the linked thread, we're planning to add additional options in a future version to provide more granular control over these links and other aspects of note Quick Copy.
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I am a PhD student and Zotero + Obsidian is a crucial part of my workflow. When taking notes in Pdfs in Zotero on my iPad, I sometimes include brackets [[example]] or **things I want to be in bold** in my commentary. However, when, after using Zotfile, I export those notes from my computer into my Obsidian Vault from , there seems to be slashes which Zotero automatically adds between the brackets ([/[) which avoid the internal links happening in Obsidian. Is there any way in which I could fix this? Those slashes did not appear in the notes generated by Zotfile, so I presume it has to do with the export from Zotero to Markdown.
Thank you very much and sorry if this appears in another discussion. As I was saying, I am just new. Cheers!
this is a bug, the developers are aware of it and hopefully, it should be fixed soon.
Such that I just get the plain markdown text of the actual note and citation.
Apologies for the slow response (it may have been answered in the many other posts in this thread!), but to your questions:
Q. How did you get the live links added? All that was exported was the text of the note, no live links to Zotero.
A. By default, Export item should have a box for 'Export Zotero links'. it may depend on the software you're importing too, but it worked fine for both Craft and Ulysses.
B. Also, does this feature work only for notes? Is it able to also work for highlights and the notes that are added to the highlight?
A. At least in Ulysses, you can drag and drop individual annotations directly in with the links.
But if you're pasting into a rich-text editor, you'll get the rich-text output, which doesn't currently include backlinks, rather than the Markdown this thread is about, which does.
If you're using Obsidian, you can change a setting to keep it from using the rich-text version. Alternatively, you can force Obsidian to use the plain text each time by Shift-dragging. (That's purely an Obsidian thing. It has no effect on Zotero itself.) There might be a keyboard shortcut to force Obsidian to paste the plain text as well.
We plan to add an option to include backlinks in the rich-text note export in a future version. They're not enabled by default because we suspect rich text is more likely to be used for sharing, where the links wouldn't be appropriate, and the fact that the URLs are hidden makes it hard to realize that these are local-only links. But in any case, this thread is about Markdown, which includes the links.
Hopefully the feature of bulk export will be incorporated into the Zotero note export also.
Thanks for the great work!
I found that the conversion from '\' to '\\' spoils the markdown writing with LaTex math in the note editor. If I write a latex equation like: $$x_1, x_2 = \frac{-b^2c}{2a}$$ in Zotero note editor, the export to markdown result is $$x_1, x_2 = \\frac{-b^2c}{2a}$$, which is a wrong latex.
The direct copy works well, while the export does not convert it right.
Thank you!
zotero-better-notes addon:
https://github.com/windingwind/zotero-better-notes/blob/master/src/Better Note Markdown.js
It also copies the linked image file to the markdown export directory, as dstillman suggested before.
The (Author, title, page) zotero link after the annotation reveals the pdf in Zotero, while the (pdf) zotero link hooks to the highlight / note in the pdf.
I feel like it makes more sense the other way around?
I would also love to see some template / basic editing support so that we could format the markdown.
While this thread is about Markdown, many people using Obsidian with Quick Copy have mistakenly thought they were pasting Markdown when they were actually pasting rich text, which didn't previously include zotero:// links via Quick Copy. It's now possible to enable those links for rich-text Quick Copy rather than changing Obsidian settings or holding down Shift to force Obsidian to use the plain-text Markdown.
Post to the linked thread with any questions on the new settings.
Also, there seems to be some confusion above about the two different links: This isn't the case. That's the citation, and it links to the parent item, not the PDF. You can insert citations directly in the note editor, including for items without PDFs. If you add an annotation, you get both a citation link and an annotation link in the Quick Copy output. But as I say in the linked thread, we're planning to add additional options in a future version to provide more granular control over these links and other aspects of note Quick Copy.