Exporting articles location in the database

aad_aardappel
Hi,

I exported my complete library to a csv file wich I imported in Excel. Works great and almost every field is exported, except the articles location in the "database."

So my library looks like:

"library name"
"collection a"
"sub collection 1"
"sub collection 2"
"collection b"
"sub collection 100"

So title, author for example are correctly exported to CSV, but I can't see the exact location within the library.....in the csv file.

Oh and exporting collections and subcollections seperately doesn't solve the problem. And answers like " you shouldn't use it this way...." don't help ;-)

Does anyone have a solution for that?

Kind regards.
  • adamsmith
    Nothing simple, but you could look if the solution here either works for you or you're able to customize it: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/75871/can-i-include-folder-name-in-exported-csv
  • aad_aardappel
    Sorry Adam. This is not a solution. The seektable file seems not to be the only file that is used when building and exporting to csv. When you use this the formatting is very strange and it seems that a second "connector" is used when formatting the csv file. All in all not a solution for a normal user. So to kinds of formatting on top and than excel won't understand (two csv's in one file).

    It should be possible to retain collection information when exporting to a csv. That should be a functionlity out of the box.

    A stumbled accross the "Export list of references while keeping folder information." Kind of exact the same question......

    Is there any other way to import the whole database in another program in which we can see the whole database, its content and its structure? Zotero is to limited when it comes to reporting. We can't use the potential.

    Kind regards.
  • tim820
    edited January 10, 2023
    Not a full solution to your problem either, but you can get the information on the collections for all selected items using this code within Zotero:
    https://gist.github.com/KalebNyquist/2ca3ac322751578b6d791cd90b4df15b

    That code could be altered to format the output in any other way you want. Or the code's existing output format could be parsed and re-listed in your preferred format with a custom Word or Excel macro.

    Or as you imply, you could inspect and query a copy of Zotero's sqlite database directly with any sqlite reader (eg DB Browser).
  • aad_aardappel
    Nice one....but I'm not a programmer.

    The only thing I want is a CSV file with all the names of articles in my library (one article per line) followed by the name of the collection and subcollection per article behind the name of the article. Hope you can help. So one line with name of the article, collection name, subcollection. Nothing more nothing less.

    Kind regards.
  • adamsmith
    Right, we understood, but that's not currently available.
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