Can no longer edit the note section within the item pane
After updating to 7, I no longer have the ability to type notes or alter the notes that exist in the item pane. Even when I attempt to migrate to a standalone note I still cannot edit.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u1658715/5p0vzv5i02ipxjbsbki3.jpg
Prior to Zotero 7, with each source (pdf) there was a window on the right where you could type notes. After the update to Zotero 7 the notes I made are still there (smaller window now) but I cannot edit them or add to them. The buttons above indicate that I should be able to format text, text color, etc... so I should be able to alter my notes but I cannot.
The problem here is that you're not really using Zotero the way it's meant to be used. You only have standalone attachments, so your only option is to convert these notes to standalone notes, in which case they won't be linked to the attachments. You generally should be creating parent items for attachments. See Standalone Attachments and Parent Items for more on this.
I'm a bit curious about your Zotero usage, though. It seems like you're using Zotero essentially as a PDF manager, with no need for metadata (title, author, etc.), citations, multiple child notes, HTML snapshots, or any of the other features of regular Zotero items. Is that correct?
Given how Zotero works, you actually have to go out of your way to avoid ever creating parent items (never saving from article pages, disabling metadata retrieval, etc.). Not sure why you took this approach?
https://www.zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero
It's not even clear to me that you understand what I'm saying about the attachment notes vs. child notes and what the normal approach here would be. We can expand on that, but it's not clear that you're interested in a genuine conversation here.
I've explained multiple times how to continue using notes — the normal way that most people who use Zotero use notes, by creating child notes on regular items they've saved, usually by clicking the save button in their browser. I'm still not sure you actually understand the normal Zotero workflow and why what you're doing is a lot more effort, but given your attitude here, I'm not going to spend more time on this.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u5025031/tkzhhtzgk1jjuabf3gyv.png
I mean it would look something like this - maybe I'm fundamentally misunderstanding the way you work, but this seems to reproduce exactly the functionality you described.
- For each entry in your library, you want to have one PDF file and one note.
- As you navigate between the entries in your library, you want to be able to see and edit the note associated to each item directly in the right-hand pane, without additional clicks.
- In Zotero 6, you were using standalone attachments and embedded attachment notes to achieve that. This was not possible after creating a parent item, as the item pane of the parent item does not show you the content of the notes.
- This is not possible anymore in Zotero 7, because embedded attachment notes have been discontinued.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to achieve what you want in Zotero 7 yet (and I don't know any other program doing that).
Considering your feedback, I agree that it would be a useful feature to be able to see and edit "primary" notes directly in the Item Pane while switching items in the Items Tree. That would probably be done in the Item Pane of a parent item, with a PDF attachment and a Note attachment, as it provides many important features of Zotero. Either in the Notes section, or in the lower part of the pane.
Some pages I found useful:
https://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_support
https://www.zotero.org/support/forum_guidelines
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u6099279/2pmtz63s8365twsm1wk4.png
Zotero 7 can show multiple child notes under a regular item, which is more friendly to users like me. You may need an extra click to edit the child note compared to the old attachment note, but that does not affect the workflow you described as `tab through all my sources by clicking on the arrow key`.
I hope that helps.
Imho the way it is now has made zotero worse for this particular use case (while everything else is really good).
thank you for that suggestion. I will definitely give that a try, as I have not considered it before.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u9897477/fy18fk5xu9umngx0k1or.png