Search Annotations by Highlight Color?

meredithturner
I've been using my highlight colors as a type of code (e.g. yellow is general info, orange is theory-specific, etc.). Is there a way to search my zotero library to see which articles have these colors highlighted? I've been playing around with the search features, but haven't had much luck. Best solution I can think of is to tag each highlight with whatever my code is for the color, but that's going to be a time-consuming process (and I obviously don't want to go back to every annotation to make it work).

I know I can rename the highlight colors, but will I be able to search for them with their new names? As of now, if I just type "yellow" into the search, nothing comes up, which makes me think no.

Is there a work-around for this?
  • dstillman
    Not currently, but it will be possible to view attachments in the items list in a future version, and it may be possible to filter by color at that time.
  • meredithturner
    Awesome, would love to see this feature implemented!
  • kdb_research
    +1 for this (or for a way to name colors and have them be available to search or filter).
  • sojusnik
    It's now possible to view attachments in the item list, as @dstillman mentioned above, so we can create saved searches with annotations too, but I still couldn't find a way to further filter those annotations by colour. Is this feature still missing or am I overlooking something?
  • dstillman
    Sorry, I mistyped above — I meant "it will be possible to view annotations in the items list in a future version". That hasn't happened yet. (It's always been possible to view attachments in the items list.)
  • AP-SK
    +1 (June 2025) >> Need the ability to search annotations by COLOUR.

    Practical example: In my case, I use green for definitions. I need to find all the instances I highlighted "food system transformation" in green so that I can defend (to my PhD committee) why I chose "transformation" (over, say, "resilience" or "sustainability") and what it means, according to the literature.
  • dstillman
    Annotations will show in the items list in the Zotero 7.1 beta. It will be possible to filter the items list by annotation color in a future update.
  • AP-SK
    Looking forward to it!
    (I do see the annotations in the items list, as children of the parent PDF. I also love seeing the annotations in the right-hand pane when the PDF is selected.)
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