Upgrade StorageFeature request: Preference for "automatically create note from annotations"
Hi all,
here is a feature request, based on the following issues I regularly encounter: I work on a pdf in zotero pdfreader and highlight various bits of text. Then I move to something else. Then I return and close the pdf, and I forget to have my notes turned into annotations. Now I cannot see in zotero whether I have already read and highlighted the pdf.
I could imagine two solutions:
a) zotero somehow indicates with a symbol in the main zotero pane (possinle to toggle as a column, in the same way I can toggle whether an item has notes attached) that a pdf has highlights but that these highlights have not been converted to notes. This would allow me to search for items with pdfs with highlights but no notes.
b) a (hidden) preference that, if toggled, would prompt zotero/zotero pdf reader to automatically convert highlights to a note, whenever a pdf is closed and existing highlights have not been turned into notes.
I hope this makes sense
mm
here is a feature request, based on the following issues I regularly encounter: I work on a pdf in zotero pdfreader and highlight various bits of text. Then I move to something else. Then I return and close the pdf, and I forget to have my notes turned into annotations. Now I cannot see in zotero whether I have already read and highlighted the pdf.
I could imagine two solutions:
a) zotero somehow indicates with a symbol in the main zotero pane (possinle to toggle as a column, in the same way I can toggle whether an item has notes attached) that a pdf has highlights but that these highlights have not been converted to notes. This would allow me to search for items with pdfs with highlights but no notes.
b) a (hidden) preference that, if toggled, would prompt zotero/zotero pdf reader to automatically convert highlights to a note, whenever a pdf is closed and existing highlights have not been turned into notes.
I hope this makes sense
mm
So +1 :)
To do (a) you can do the following:
In Zotero add the Notes and Attachment columns to the list view.
Install Ethereal Style plugin which provides more columns you can use - select Annotations in Style settings, then add Annotation column to the list in Zotero.
This looks like the following:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u3058096/wjmtu18k24cqhnm0075p.png
This could be done using the Action and Tags plugin by writing a script. However, it would could end up being difficult to cater for cases like:
The annotations have all been placed in one note.
Even if the annotation is placed in a separate note you might subsequently add/change the note contents
This is a niche workflow so best done using scripting rather than a feature for all users IMO.
With the BetterNotes plugin is possible to turn annotations into notes one by one, directly from the pdf reader tab, but there's no automatic setting to turn each newly created annotation into a note.
github.com/Derican/zotero-annotes?tab=readme-ov-file
When I started using Zotero, if I highlighted text in a pdf it automatically generated a note that I could drop right into my word documents. It was amazing. Then it just stopped and I haven't been able to find a fix to bring it back.
You can always drag an annotation to a word processor document, but if you want active Zotero citations, you have to use the Add Note feature of the word processor plugin. In a coming update, it will be possible to directly insert annotations into word processor documents via the plugin, so it won't be necessary to create Zotero notes from annotations for that.
(Zotero 8 also displays annotations in the items list and in the item pane, so there are fewer reasons to create a note from annotations other than when you actually want to take notes around those annotations, and at that point there wouldn't be any way to automatically update the note, since it would contain other edits.)