More "Extra" Fields

stankapl · June 13, 2024

Consider adding more "Extra" fields for each record. Extra1, Extra2, maybe a total of five. They are very useful.

aborel · June 13, 2024

The extra field can contain several variables, on separate lines https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/item_types_and_fields#citing_fields_from_extra

Does this address your use case? If not, can you describe what you want to achieve?

stankapl · June 13, 2024

I currently use the Extra field to enter multiple lines of information on the type of media an item is stored in. For example, I may have a book as both a hard copy and a Kindle edition, so I enter this in the Extra field. This is fit for this specific purpose but is not sortable and becomes clumsy if different and multiple pieces of information are combined in the single Extra field. For example, I have American military attaché reports circa 1939-1940. Some documents are reports from the UK, other reports from France, others may cover multiple countries. With a an open "Extra2" field, I could use it to identify the geographic coverage of the report. An alternative is to create folders, but adding a field is, to my mind, a more efficient way than further expanding and complicating the folder structure.

AbeJellinek · June 14, 2024

That sounds like a good use case for tags.

signsinthedust · July 22, 2024

Zotero 7 now allows for the Extra field to be a visible, indexable column on the main pane. Very cool.

nocona71 · September 5, 2024

The availability of the extra field is a great step forward.

In additon I would like to be able to view, sort and edit available "custom extra fields" in a dedicated column -- simlilar to the functionality which is provided for the "Read_Status" by the plugin https://github.com/Dominic-DallOsto/zotero-reading-list :

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u7628989/2vn9a7ickddzhdoo4eba.png

Here is a draft how this could look like for a "custom extra fields" (here: "finished"):

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u7628989/ct18vcteg8ixt3bc575z.png

Ideally Zotero should identify all available "custom extra fields" and provide a flyout menu in the column-selector widget under "extra" to offer all available "custom extra fields" :

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u7628989/93a3e049t79jfrzr3zh2.png

mma227 · 2025-09-18T19:35:29+00:00

I agree with nocona71 that it looks like it is an unfinished business. It would be awesome to be able to select which specific sub-field to display in the column. For example it would let us display the impact factor using the zotIF plugin.