Search of My Library Missing Unique Strings

DonnaCoxBaker
Happening in both 6.0.27 and the v7 Beta...
I had created a system for myself of flagging certain notes as To Do items, Research Plan items, etc., by using unique strings at the front of the note title: *DO: to flag a To Do, *RP: to flag a Research Plan, etc. These strings, which I expect to be unique from most of the other searchable text in Zotero allowed me to pull up all my To Do items by doing a search on "*DO:". This still works if I am in a subcollection that contains To Do items. But if I do the search on the entire My Library, it does not work. It does seem to try to filter down to a lesser number of items (1461 in a database of 10075) but it is way too many items and is not the notes I used the *DO: string in.
  • adamsmith
    Is that in everything mode in the quick search bar? And are all the items you're finding attachments? When I search for *DO in everything mode (I don't use the flag anywhere myself, obv.), I get a bunch of attachments returned (you can tell that the attachment is returned because the parent item is grey).

    I don't think that's correct behavior, but that'd explain it.
    If that's the case, instead creating saved searches with
    Note -- contains -- *DO
    should work nicely

  • DonnaCoxBaker
    Right, Adam. It is bringing up attachments. The workaround will do for now. Thank you for that!
  • DonnaCoxBaker
    @adamsmith: Hey, Adam. Do you know if there's a way to confirm that this has been put in the bug list? It was odd luck that the "*DO" triggered it. It makes me think there might be other letter/symbol combinations that have not yet been identified which will also hit this problem.
  • DonnaCoxBaker
    @adamsmith: Adam, I've found this happening on another string that I had created as unique. It's "*RP: " This string allowed me to find all of the Research Plans I have in operation. It's doing the same thing as "*DO: ". I wonder if the asterisk is creating the glitch?
  • DonnaCoxBaker
    And another string is giving me a problem--this one a more significant problem for us all. I was trying to bring up every item where I had an internal link to another Zotero collection or topic. I searched on "Zotero:" and it once again brought up hundreds of topics with PDFs attached. Most did not have the search string in them. I am also noticing that a number of my internal links, created with Zutilo, are now bringing up nothing. I'll research that one a bit more before I officially call it a bug. But I mention it now, in case it's related.
  • adamsmith
    If you use/used Zotfile, I think those would be links from the automatically extracted ToC?
  • DonnaCoxBaker
    It gets deeper. With "Zotero:" in the Everything search on My Library, it brings up some good results and a whole lot of items with PDFs that are not related, as mentioned. But while Zotero: is still in the search Window, clicking on a tag in the Tag Selector--one that has items in the selected items--it won't select for the tag.
  • DonnaCoxBaker
    @adamsmith. I wasn't using Zotfile, but I did use Zutilo.
  • DonnaCoxBaker
    I am finding MANY problems with searching. But I've just checked, and I don't have these problems in the Web Library. Could my index be corrupted?
  • DonnaCoxBaker
    I've now found the problem in the Place field, too. In creating the timelines I described in another post (https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/110800/zotero-7-beta-internal-link-wont-activate-when-tag-is-selected/p1), I use a special syntax of the 2-digit state code, colon, space, then a county name, to sort timeline items by place. It worked great, but now, I can't search on the state with the colon and space (e.g. "AL: " to filter timelines to a specific state. The minute I type the colon in the search field, every item in my timeline disappears. The colon is the problem. Is there a way to know if this has made it to the bug list?
  • adamsmith
    How does a string look exactly?
    It does look like everything search strips trailing colons from the search, so "AL:" or "AL: " will just match on "al" (not case sensitive), regardless of quotation marks.
    If you search without quotation marks, terms are treated separately and as or, so 'AL: Mobile' (no quotation marks will search on 'al' or 'mobile'.
    With quotation marks, enclosed colons are included in the search, so "AL: Mobile" in quotation marks will only find that exact phrase.

    Finally, note that All Fields and Tags search does not behave the same way: there, trailing colons are treated as part of the string, so AL: (no quotation marks) will only find items that actually contain AL:

    Does that roughly match what you're seeing?
  • DonnaCoxBaker
    Well, I'm puzzled, @adamsmith. I just went back in and everything is working the way it used to--though I haven't loaded a new update to beta. I checked the *DO: string and it works fine, too. I don't know what could have changed in the past couple of hours, but I hope it sticks.
  • DonnaCoxBaker
    edited February 11, 2024
    This problem continues and gets larger. Today, I did a search to pull up all notes I started with the numbers 22.2.01 in My Library. It's doing what the ones above did--pulling all PDFs, mixed with all the notes beginning with 22.2.01. I had believe that the colon was causing the problem, but a period is also triggering the problem.

    P.S. This happens when searching on Everything. It works properly when I search All Fields & Tags.
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