Upgrade Storagequestions about Quick Copy and shortcut keys for copying
I'm a bit confused about the functionality of the drag-and-drop Quick Copy, and of the shortcut keys for copy and copy citation. I have a few questions:
What's the difference between copy to clipboard (ctrl-atl-C on my pc) and copy citation to clipboard (ctrl-alt-A)? I can't get copy to clipboard (ctlr-alt-C) to do anything at all. (Edited to add: Ctrl-alt-A works fine, and as expected, copying a formatted citation.)
In Quick Copy, if I want to drag multiple items, it seems they all have to be items of the same type - is that correct? If I select and drag several references with notes to a word processor, it only copies the references. If I drag several notes, even from different references, but without the references selected, it pastes the notes in full. If I drag an attachment, it pastes it (though it's strange: a snapshot pastes as a link, while a link seems to paste as a formatted citation). But if I try to drag an attachment and a note at the same time, it will only paste the attachment's info, while omitting the note.
A lot of this is counter-intuitive to me, and I'm wondering if I'm missing something. Is there a way to drag multiple items of different types - e.g. references and notes together - together into a word processor through Quick Copy? If not, is there a way to do this through ctrl-alt-C or ctrl-alt-A that I'm missing? Or is there anything under development that would allow this?
What's the difference between copy to clipboard (ctrl-atl-C on my pc) and copy citation to clipboard (ctrl-alt-A)? I can't get copy to clipboard (ctlr-alt-C) to do anything at all. (Edited to add: Ctrl-alt-A works fine, and as expected, copying a formatted citation.)
In Quick Copy, if I want to drag multiple items, it seems they all have to be items of the same type - is that correct? If I select and drag several references with notes to a word processor, it only copies the references. If I drag several notes, even from different references, but without the references selected, it pastes the notes in full. If I drag an attachment, it pastes it (though it's strange: a snapshot pastes as a link, while a link seems to paste as a formatted citation). But if I try to drag an attachment and a note at the same time, it will only paste the attachment's info, while omitting the note.
A lot of this is counter-intuitive to me, and I'm wondering if I'm missing something. Is there a way to drag multiple items of different types - e.g. references and notes together - together into a word processor through Quick Copy? If not, is there a way to do this through ctrl-alt-C or ctrl-alt-A that I'm missing? Or is there anything under development that would allow this?
ctrl-alt-c will give you a bibliography entry
ctrl-alt-a will give you an in text citation
Obviously that means that if your default style doesn't have a bibliography (such as some Chicago style) ctrl-alt-c won't do anything.
I don't know much about the dragging and dropping of notes - but roughly what you describe seems accurate. If it's counter-intuitive depends on what you expect.
The idea is that drag&drop gives you a bibliography if you drag regular items - and you wouldn't want notes in a bibliography.
In addition it has the option of inserting the text of notes by dragging them.
I don't think there is a very good way to get what you want - it depends on what exactly you're trying to achieve - but maybe the generate reports function can do some good?
Ah, that explains Ctrl-Alt-C: I might have a default style without a bibliography right now.
On why it's counter-intuitive: If I grab a bunch of stuff and drag it over, I expect it all to come, or, if not, for there to be some obvious principle about what comes and what doesn't. References coming without attachments is easy enough to understand, but if I grab a bunch of notes + a link attachment + a snapshot attachment, it's not at all intuitive that the only thing that would actually output is the last of these.
"The idea is that drag&drop gives you a bibliography if you drag regular items - and you wouldn't want notes in a bibliography."
You would if you're trying to find an easy way to make an annotated bibliography. I know many other people have posted about wanting this from Zotero as well, so the idea can't be that strange. This is just the latest of several of my attempts to find a not too convoluted workflow for making an annotated bibliography using my Zotero data. If I was more comfortable with Javascript I'd try to integrate some code to generate a citation instead of metadata in the report js, but that's a whole other can of worms, and a bit beyond my capacities and time available, unfortunately.
I wasn't trying to claim that the current behavior is ideal - given the other limitations (e.g. the fact that you can't just use notes in a citation style, which would be another way to create annotated bibliographies) it probably isn't.
I'm just saying there is a certain logic to it.