Export Notes in CSV

lightmaven
Hello. I am frustrated with Zotero right now. I have been building my library and for some entries have added notes. I now want to gather all the articles that have notes associated with them. The only instructions I see for this is to open each entries and export the notes. That is not logical because I have entered 50 articles during a research session, for example, and only 4 may have notes. It makes no sense to have to 1) remember which articles I made notes on and 2) to have to make an inventory list of the articles that have notes on a separate document.

Additionally, I have tried the export library, selected CSV and include notes, yet the CSV does not show the notes. PLEASE HELP ASAP!

Thanks!
  • arggem
    In the Advanced Search (https://www.zotero.org/support/searching#advanced_search), you can search for "Note contains" and then leave the rest blank. I think that should give you all items that have something in a note.

    Does that give you what you want?
  • adamsmith
    But also, CSV export does include notes -- they're all the way at the end, in column AK if you're opening with Excel
  • adamsmith
    Reports (right-click --> Generate Report) also include notes
  • lightmaven
    edited December 15, 2022
    @arggem Thanks, that does help! Although, entries with no notes came up in the search.
    @Adamsmith thanks! I see that now, didn't recognize it because the cell is populated with extraneous text(code) that has nothing to do with the note. div data-schema-version="8" pHere is a good note/p /div

    I had to remove some of the code so that it would show in this post.

    There is still an issue.

    Doing the Advanced Search(AS) did get me the 2 test items with notes, but also gave me two entries that didn't have notes. Not sure why those came up as they have no notes and nothing in common with the two that have notes.

    In order to follow the @Adamsmith suggestion of "Reports (right-click --> Generate Report) also include notes ", that does not work. 1) where is this "Reports" button? I only see Generate Report when I right click on a collection or a particular item. Since I only see Generate Report on a collection or particular item, that presumes I need to know which collection, out of 20, has articles with notes! Going back to the suggestion of @arggem, the items that come up in AS can not Generate Report and if I click on each entry, I get taken to that entry, but no idea in what collection is that entry so that I can look at that collection to make a report to get all the notes! Please advise.


  • adamsmith
    edited December 16, 2022
    It'd help if you described exactly what workflow you're after, but FWIW,
    1) And advanced search for Item Type -- is -- note returns all notes (you can then, e.g., create an saved search, select all, and generate report). If you want the notes with the context of their parent items, select both the "Include Child & Parent items" and "Show only Top level items" in the advanced search.
    2) You can add a column "Notes" to the middle panel (by right-clicking on the column headers) and sort by that note to have items with note sort to the top (you can then select all and generate report or so)

    (Also, the code you see in the CSV is the html that formats the notes, so it's not unrelated, though it may be unwanted. Wouldn't be hard to filter out or use with any number of tools)
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