Quick search not so quick: let us optionally search just title+author (and not fulltext)

I find myself using quick search less and less because it is relatively slow on a database with fulltext indexing enabled. And then when I want to quickly look up articles on a certain term I find I need to open Advanced search to search "in title". So in effect, having a fulltext indexed database takes the "quick" out of quick search. My love for quick search would be restored if there were an option to make it search titles and authors (and not fulltext).

I think this is a simple usability/interface issue that when fixed would make a lot of users happy.
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  • Just as a work around suggestion, I have a set of advanced search queries saved e.g. author search, title search, journal search etc. that it does only take seconds to alter. Rarely use quicksearch now.
    On the other hand, I'm cluttering up with saved searches, but that is a whole different and existing feature request.

    Regards,
    Jon.
  • + 1 for exactly such an option. Thanks.
  • I'm all in favor of such a option. Here my two cents about the concrete implementation:

    1. create a option in preferences to globally switch on/off quicksearch.

    2. When quicksearch is turned off (or when you use the "-prefix in quicksearch: A google-like search syntax would be helpful, e.g. allowing searches like "author:lock itemtype:article year:1999..2002".

    What do other people think?
  • Quick search is still useless for me. A search syntax would be nice, but if at least my original suggestion could be implemented (which should really be trivial) I'd be very happy.

    Could a dev comment on this?
  • Agreed. Titles and authors would work; even nicer would be an option that lets us toggle each separately: author, title, notes, tags, fulltext. I suspect most people search for the first for most of the time.I am struggling with efficient searching especially since I am trying to move to group libraries.
  • Bump. It's very annoying on exactly those libraries that are meant to be helped by a quick search function.
  • Bump. Any dev?
  • +1 I think notes + abstracts turned on by default would be a nice compromise, that should not hit the speed so badly
  • There is an open ticket on this issue: https://www.zotero.org/trac/ticket/1004
  • Yes, this has been planned for a long time. It won't be in 2.0, which is feature-frozen, but we'll aim to do it for 2.1.
  • Yay! Looking forward to it; the interface described also sounds very useful.
  • Since it looks like you are planing to add this functionality (which is totally great!), here are some suggestions:

    1) Also add this menu to the 'insert-citation' dialog for the word etc. plugins
    2) remember what the last selected search was. I basically want to search for authora 90% of the time.
    3) Add a search for 'note content' so that only all the notes are searched. That might be more complicated but would be totally great because currently it's neither possible to search for notes nor inside of note (I know, you can generate reports). It would really improve the usefulness of notes in Zotero.

    Thanks!
  • Is there any time line on when the magic 2.1 will appear?
    [Desperate for batch editing]
  • from what I've heard it's still a bit out - probably several months.
  • Dang, I would consider switching to the trunk for that if it would be already implemented there. This is really one of the things that bugs me several times a day.
  • Well, any news? I gather from folks I helped migrate to Zotero that this is the single most annoying "feature" of Zotero. The so-called quick search is virtually useless for any library with full-text indexing enabled.
  • agreed, I never use quick search and I'm always annoyed if I accidentally start typing into quick search
    However, what I've found recently is that, at least if you know the beginning of the author or title you can just sort by that category in the middle panel and start typing to get to where you want. I know that's not the same, but it's instant and saves me the annoying 5-10sec wait of "quick" search.
    I'm sure some people have been doing this anyway, but I figured it'd be worthwhile to point out.
  • and 'note search' from the same quick search bar.... please... would be so powerful and make Zotero an even better place to save all your notes...

    (sorry to repeat myself, but I would like to know whether that is actually planed)
  • However, what I've found recently is that, at least if you know the beginning of the author or title you can just sort by that category in the middle panel and start typing to get to where you want. I know that's not the same, but it's instant and saves me the annoying 5-10sec wait of "quick" search.
    Great! I did not know that. Is it documented in the wiki?
  • I knew that, and have done it from the beginning. Maybe I have not appreciated that enough because I regard it basic functionality — any file manager and most email applications does/do this out of the box so users are bound to expect Zotero works the same. It is great, but it doesn't solve what quick search would solve if it were implemented the right way.

    The whole point of quick search should be that you can do a _quick_ search through article titles (information- and keyword-rich, but often you don't know the first letter), abstracts (likewise), authors (including non-first authors), and other fields that you should be able to choose. As long as it doesn't work like that it is entirely useless in libraries that have fulltext indexing enabled — precisely those libraries, as I pointed out above, that would benefit most from quick search in the first place.
  • as I said, I completely agree with you. The fact that any user with even a moderate sized library needs to actively avoid quick-search unless you want to freeze your Zotero for 10+ secs. is a bit silly.

    I still thought it was useful to point this out, though, and given Gracile's post I think I was right. It's not a functionality that many people are aware of in regular file browsers, either.
  • I saw that this is not part of the 2.1 beta... it would be great to hear from the developers whether there are plans to add it for the final realizes?
    AND if so, does these plans include note search which I still think is crucial?
  • 2.0.9 seems to have more surprises... it's not only the case that spell checking partly works for notes (http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/6393/spell-check-notes/#Item_15), note search also seems to work now. Maybe I just didn't realize that it was possible before because I never used the quick search option, but the search now also includes the content of notes which I think is great.
    A drop-down list with different search options including note search and a highlighting of the word in the note content would still be great!
  • edited October 13, 2010
    Maybe I just didn't realize that it was possible before because I never used the quick search option, but the search now also includes the content of notes which I think is great.
    I'm using zotero 2.0.6 and "note search" is possible. I think it has been implemented a long time ago.
  • Has this been fixed for 2.1 as promised? 'quick'search still hangs my computer for about 20 seconds. I searched through the zotero preferences pane and could not find an option to disable quick search. Did I miss something?
  • it's not in 2.1 - it wasn't exactly promised, either - Dan said they'd aim for 2.1 and it didn't make it on this one - lots of other things did.
  • I've implemented a drop-down menu in the quicksearch bar on the trunk (for the next major version after 2.1).
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