Detect files with more than one attachment?

DoctorGeorgios · March 6, 2023

Hi, is there a way (e.g. through advanced search) to find files with more than one pdf attached to them? When I merge articles and both have PDFs attached to them, both PDFs are preserved, leading to duplicate files and wasting space. How can I detect and remove those duplicate PDFs?

sehrene · March 21, 2023

I have the same issue!

dstillman · March 21, 2023

Best you can do (outside of writing a little code) is clicking in the items list and pressing + on the keyboard to expand all items, and then scanning down the list for duplicates.

Note that as of Zotero 6 it will automatically move identical (or nearly identical) PDFs to the trash when merging duplicates, but that won't help if you have different versions of PDFs or you merged items in an earlier version.

johncoxon · 2026-01-06T16:27:58+00:00

I also have this issue.

tim820 · 2026-01-06T22:27:17+00:00

This plugin adds an attachment count column to the main window, which you can then sort by, to find items with more than one attachment.
https://github.com/SciImage/zotero-attachment-scanner?tab=readme-ov-file#plugin-functions-and-features