Effect of new notes on "Date modified"

imoelder
For working with a group library and syncing with "My library" it is helpful to sort by "Date modified". However, adding a note to a reference does not change the "Date modified" of the reference. Is there a way to change this, i.e. to sort by the last change in a reference (notes included) ?
  • ajlyon
    I believe people have made comments for and against counting notes as "modifications" for their parent items. To get the same behavior, you can create a saved search for recent modifications and set it to "Include child and parent items for matching items"-- that way the modified notes will cause the entire item to show up in the search results. And really, I think every Zotero user can benefit from having a "Last 10 days" saved search-- add one to the group library and one to your personal library and you should be able to use it to monitor and sync changes.

    (Slightly off-topic: Perhaps there could be default saved searches for new Zotero users, like "Last 10 days"? This goes back to the iTunes-like interface-- many people only ever use the default smart playlists in iTunes, likely because they already cover some common use cases. Recent items would be, I imagine, useful for most new users.)
  • erazlogo
    There is an inconsistency in saved searches on "date added" (which does not include notes at all) and "date modified" (which does). I.e., if I add a note to an old source a search for items added in the last day will not find this note and the source will not appear in the middle pane, but a search for items modified in the last day will find the note, and the source will come up on the list as well, but grayed out. This is not a problem in using the database once you figure out what's going on, but logically it makes little sense.
  • mark
    I like ajlyon's suggestion to have a couple of default saved searches. Makes users familiar with a feature and makes their life easier. Good thinking!
  • imoelder
    ajlyon, thanks for your hint. It helped to deal with the problem.

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