Rename PDF Files as Year-Author-Title

Sajid Nadeem
Hey Zotero Team,
My supervisor needs PDF files to be named in this format"
Year-Author-Title
rather than:
Author-Year-Title
Any way I can automatically rename the files in my library or the new files I import ?
Thanks !
Sajid
  • adamsmith
    See the attachmentRenameFormatString hidden preference https://www.zotero.org/support/preferences/hidden_preferences#translator_preferences

  • Sajid Nadeem
    Thanks for the quick response Adam ! It worked.
    Is there a way of automatically renaming existing files too as per this new format?
  • bwiernik
    Select all the items, right-click, and choose Rename Files from Item Metadata
  • Sajid Nadeem
    Thank you so much :)
  • qenops
    Is there a list of the codes for the fields anywhere? I only see the 3 default ones, but would like to add publication as well.

    I would actually like to be able to customize this a lot more, such as removing spaces from the title (switching to camelCase) since spaces should never be in file names. Also being able to do an initialism for some of the fields (publication) would be great too!
  • adamsmith
    look at ZotFile for renaming if you need more flexibility. www.zotfile.com
  • wehzie
    Cannot find the rename files option in the context menu on Zotero 6. Any hints?
  • dstillman
    @wehzie: What exactly are you looking for? Files saved from the web are renamed automatically, and existing child attachments can be renamed by right-click and choosing Rename File from Parent Metadata.
  • wehzie
    edited July 25, 2022
    Thank you, issue solved. I found that I needed to click the arrow towards the left of an entry in order to reveal the attachments. Then “Rename Files From Metadata” becomes available by right clicking on an attachment.
  • GiacomoJHJ
    HI! I am running Zotero 6.0.10 and I imported my mendeley library. I want to rename all my filenames to c - y - t and I have modified attachmentRenameFormatString accordingly. As far as I select all (ctrl-a), the "Rename Files From Metadata" disappear from the menu. In order "Rename Files From Metadata" to be available I have to click on the arrow on the left and select the single .pdf. In this way it works. But I have more than 1000 references and I would avoid to do this work one by one. Is there a way to do it for all at once?
  • dstillman
    @GiacomoJHJ: You need to do a search that matches only the child attachments, either with a saved search ([Attachment File Type] [is] [PDF]) or just by typing something like "PDF" that matches most of the attachments into the search bar in the toolbar, and then do a Select All. If you use the search bar, you might need to deselect a few top-level items that match.

    (And note that you don't need to modify attachmentRenameFormatString if you want Creator - Year - Title. That's the default.)

    Note that new items saved from the web will always be automatically renamed by Zotero. It's just imported files that aren't renamed automatically.
  • GiacomoJHJ
    Thank you.
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