How to search for items where there is no 'publication'

geekmoose
I'm in the middle of manual moving over PDFs from an old Papers database into Zotero.

To aid this I'm trying to create a saved search where the item type is set to 'Journal Article' but the 'Publisher' field is blank.

I've tried setting 'Publication' to 'is' and then leaving the value empty but no items are returned in the list.

Is this possible, or does there need to be a feature request for an 'is blank' criteria ?
  • adamsmith
    I think publication - does not contain
    and then leaving the field blank should work.

    Sorting by item type, then publication would be another way to have all articles without publication in one place, though not a saved search
  • geekmoose
    @adamsmith - I've just tried that and it doesn't work either.

    You can sort columns, but I want it as a search folder to plough through.
  • adamsmith
    Match all
    publication -- does not contain -- [blank]
    item type -- is -- journal article

    works for me. Are you sure you're testing this right?
  • geekmoose
    Thanks for double checking. What I failed to do was go out of the saved search and back in so the results list refreshes. I'm used to a 'smart folder' behaviour on macOS where lists (usually) refresh immediately on any criteria change.
  • AbeJellinek
    I'm used to a 'smart folder' behaviour on macOS where lists (usually) refresh immediately on any criteria change.
    That's also the intended behavior in Zotero, and it seems to be working fine for me in the latest release. Would you be able to come up with a set of steps that can consistently reproduce the behavior where search results don't update after the conditions change? We can take a look.
  • geekmoose
    This is indeed the behaviour for Zotero _if_ there parameter field for the search item is not empty. If you clear the contents of the search parameter and click OK, then the search will not update until you go back into the list.
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