Upgrade StorageAttachment Preview Destroys Standalone PDF Workflow (Need Disable Option)
Hello Zotero Team,
Thank you for all the incredible work on Zotero. I am writing to address an issue with the new Attachment Preview in the right-hand item pane (introduced in Zotero 7) that has caused a significant and destructive shift in my long-established workflow based on standalone PDF files.
The Core Problem: Space and Usability
When selecting a standalone PDF item, the right-hand panel is now dominated by the Attachment Preview.
This preview is too small to be readable.
More importantly, it pushes the Notes area (where I keep my quick summaries/annotations) off-screen, making it minuscule and unusable without constant scrolling for every single PDF I select.
The Disastrous Consequence: Forced Workflow Migration
Because I could no longer efficiently access the Notes area on standalone PDF items, I was forced to migrate my entire library to the Parent Item structure (creating a Parent Item for every PDF and converting the PDF's internal Note content into a child note under the Parent Item).
This forced migration has resulted in several major workflow breakdowns:
Inefficient Batch Processing:
I can no longer quickly select a group of PDFs in the center pane and drag-and-drop them to external tools (like certain research applications or desktop folders). The process is now tedious and slow, as I have to access the child PDF from the Parent Item structure.
Naming Conventions:
All my new parent items are frequently titled with the generic "PDF" name, requiring me to spend significant extra time manually renaming them for better organization, as this metadata is now more critical than the original PDF filename.
Loss of Simplicity:
The fundamental advantage of the standalone PDF workflow—simplicity and direct access—has been completely lost.
- Feature Request -
The core problem is the lack of screen space and the inability to quickly access the Notes area due to the large, non-collapsible preview.
Could the development team please make it possible to:
Provide a permanent preference (in the settings or Config Editor) to never display the Attachment Preview in the right-hand panel. This is essential to restore the screen real estate and the rapid review workflow that many users of standalone PDFs rely on.
Thank you for urgently considering this feedback. The current design has led to a disastrous change in my organizational structure and overall efficiency.
Best regards,
Jean Hertz
Thank you for all the incredible work on Zotero. I am writing to address an issue with the new Attachment Preview in the right-hand item pane (introduced in Zotero 7) that has caused a significant and destructive shift in my long-established workflow based on standalone PDF files.
The Core Problem: Space and Usability
When selecting a standalone PDF item, the right-hand panel is now dominated by the Attachment Preview.
This preview is too small to be readable.
More importantly, it pushes the Notes area (where I keep my quick summaries/annotations) off-screen, making it minuscule and unusable without constant scrolling for every single PDF I select.
The Disastrous Consequence: Forced Workflow Migration
Because I could no longer efficiently access the Notes area on standalone PDF items, I was forced to migrate my entire library to the Parent Item structure (creating a Parent Item for every PDF and converting the PDF's internal Note content into a child note under the Parent Item).
This forced migration has resulted in several major workflow breakdowns:
Inefficient Batch Processing:
I can no longer quickly select a group of PDFs in the center pane and drag-and-drop them to external tools (like certain research applications or desktop folders). The process is now tedious and slow, as I have to access the child PDF from the Parent Item structure.
Naming Conventions:
All my new parent items are frequently titled with the generic "PDF" name, requiring me to spend significant extra time manually renaming them for better organization, as this metadata is now more critical than the original PDF filename.
Loss of Simplicity:
The fundamental advantage of the standalone PDF workflow—simplicity and direct access—has been completely lost.
- Feature Request -
The core problem is the lack of screen space and the inability to quickly access the Notes area due to the large, non-collapsible preview.
Could the development team please make it possible to:
Provide a permanent preference (in the settings or Config Editor) to never display the Attachment Preview in the right-hand panel. This is essential to restore the screen real estate and the rapid review workflow that many users of standalone PDFs rely on.
Thank you for urgently considering this feedback. The current design has led to a disastrous change in my organizational structure and overall efficiency.
Best regards,
Jean Hertz
Embedded attachment notes have been deprecated and are no longer creatable or editable in the item pane. The fact that there's also a preview above isn't particularly relevant.
Embedded attachment notes were always an esoteric feature, used mostly by third-party plugins (e.g., ZotFile stored PDF outlines there), and they don't really reflect how Zotero is designed to be used. They also add too much technical complexity with some newer features in Zotero, such as the ability to add images to notes. The standard workflow revolves around parent items and child attachments and notes, and now attachment annotations (which are being exposed further in the item pane and items list in Zotero 7 and 8). You can use File → Export PDFs with parent items selected to export files to a folder. I think there's some confusion here. A parent item would never be titled "PDF" by default. Child attachments are titled "PDF" when they're added to a parent item or when you retrieve metadata for them, but standalone attachments wouldn't be titled "PDF" and the parent items you create from them wouldn't be either. (And the files themselves are always renamed based on the parent item metadata.) If you're seeing this, we'd want precise steps to reproduce.
- There is a preference to hide the attachment preview, accessible by right-clicking on the attachment section label:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u2433/5ui6wqvx10k6hz22kx70.png
- You can pin the note section of the right-hand pane so that it always appears at as the default section
- In Zotero 8 beta you can also sort the different sections of the right-hand panel using drag in drop