Extract Annotations for each color: Zotero 6
In Zotero 5, it was possible to have Zotfile make a new note for each of the color annotations (e.g., green annotations would contain annotations that were in green color). In Zotero 6, I only see one file. I see that I have an option to toggle color on/off but I wanted to ask if there is a way to create separate notes for each of the annotations. Right now, when I extract to markdown, there isn't any color information embedded.
TLDR: Is there a way to make a new note for each of the color annotations as Zotfile allowed you to do in Zotero 5?
TLDR: Is there a way to make a new note for each of the color annotations as Zotfile allowed you to do in Zotero 5?
- In the left pane, successively select the different colors.
- In the right pane, create a new note (with the option “Add item note”). First, I create a heading, which will be the title of the note that will group the annotations of a given color.
- Move the annotations of the selected color (in the left pane), to the newly created note in the right pane. I have a template created for those notes so that they will be formatted the way I want when I export them to the markdown editor (Obsidian in my case).
- Repeat these steps for each color.
In the end, I have a group of notes associated with each article, with its own title.
If there's sufficient demand, we can consider the ability to automatically create separate notes for each color in a future version.
It would be great to have an automatic version as the Zotfile functionality, especially when you have hundreds of annotations.
Thanks!
Unfortunately, this renders the entire update to Zotero 6 useless to me.
I also cannot find an option not to use the new editor and go back to my trusted Acrobat editor. Other than viewing the item in a folder and then starting up acrobat. Which is a lot of extra work, as I work with many documents.
So, my old way of working does not work well any more, and the new way is not useful to me. Such a pity. I don't understand why Zotero had made its own editor. There are plenty of those around.
Go to Edit/Preferences/General/Open PDFs Using ____ (about half way down)
You can simply change the option to open pdfs in the Edit → Preferences → General and select System Default. You'll be able to simply double click the items to open them (as you used to).
Hope this helps.
If you're looking to do something else, you'd have to be more specific. As I say above, it's already possible to create a note template that includes a label for a given color.
Sometimes I might want all color highlights together, but I think I would more often want to see those of a single color together in a note;
we always have the option to open the pdf to read through all colors together, not clipped/shortened, in the body of the pdf.
(we can see colors filtered in the left pane of the Zotero Reader, but with everything clipped or shortened unless you click on each one twice)
That's an interesting idea.
I have to say I don't initially have a strong opinion on
Create-Note-By-Color vs. Expand-All-In-Reader.
I'm not yet doing the other things with notes that seem popular like extracting to a separate tool or editing them in the Note editor but they're in my mental list of ideas.
I would absolutely use a toggle button or such to Expand-All-Annotations, to read what amounts to my short version of an article, although maybe an edited Note would be better.
I'll think on it and maybe make that feature request tomorrow ~