Adding childnotes to multiple items

In my workflow when reading literature, I often like to first download a lot of texts and then go through them and add a child note about what I'm interested with regards to each text (i.e., "skim this", "look for theory XYZ", "seminal article", "empirical study", etc.). As this task can get sort of repetitive, I was wondering whether it would be possible to assign the same child note to multiple items. I realize that tags can do this, but it's not the right solution; my childnotes are only sometimes generic, sometimes they are very specific. Thus using tags instead of child notes would result in a lot of tags that apply to only 1 or 2 items.
  • No, this would have to be done by a plugin.
  • I see, I don't know how difficult it would be, but maybe I'll give it a shot when I have some spare time
  • edited September 20, 2022
    @G-Radiation, the Better Notes plugin can do this. The item note template of this plugin allows user to choose multiple item, apply some operations on them, and then output something to current note or clipboard.

    Ignoring the output part, that could be what you want. You can create a template that adds child notes to some items. Or maybe I can create one for you.

    As far as I know, someone use it in a similar way to create child notes according to the annotation color of the item. It should not be too difficult.
  • I would like to do the same ( add a child note to multiple items)
    - went to better notes plugin but have no idea what to install!
  • @T4Marie

    I would like to help you to build the template script you want. Maybe you could start a new issue in the plugin's GitHub and we could discuss it there.

    https://github.com/windingwind/zotero-better-notes/issues
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