Bulk renaming of attachments

othoms · 2025-07-31T16:53:21+00:00

I have noticed that, while the merging functionality is very good, there is an unexpected behavior with respect to attachments. If both items have attachments with the same title, only the attachment from the master item is kept. If the attachments have different titles, both will be kept. I'd like to figure out a way to keep both attachments. Is there a way to rename the titles of attachments based on other metadata in bulk?

adamsmith · 2025-07-31T20:55:55+00:00

Zotero should be very conservative in deleting attachments and it's certainly looking at more than the attachment title (basically it's trying to make sure that they're identical files) -- why do you want to keep both attachments?

othoms · 2025-08-01T11:48:24+00:00

@adamsmith: Interesting, but in my scenario it's not working as I think it should. In a large group research library which dozens of individuals have added references to over several years, we have many instances of the dreaded "File not found" error for snapshots. We need to maintain our extensive use of tags and collections, so re-adding and merging items seems the most efficient solution. When I merge two items with one snapshot each (both titled "Snapshot"), only the snapshot of the master item is kept even if the associated file is not available anymore. (I just confirmed this behavior again.)