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Frequently Requested Features
This page serves as an overview of the status of some of the most frequently requested features for Zotero. This list is unofficial and is principally maintained by community members, not by Zotero's developers. It is not a place for feature requests, which should be posted to the Zotero forum
Zotero Interface
Rich text formatting in the UI
Titles and abstracts in certain fields (e.g. biology) often contain text in superscript, subscript, italics, small-caps and bold-face. Zotero should allow in-field markup to be applied, and render marked up text with the proper formatting. This affects both the client and zotero.org.
Status: Supported by the Zotero team, no immediate plans to implement
Discussion: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/23785/parse-markup-tags-in-titles/ (refers to formatting on the website) http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/3875/rich-text-in-titles/?Focus=110229#Comment_110229 (refers to client UI)
Mark non-duplicates
Provide a way to indicate that two items are not duplicates of each other when Zotero thinks they are.
Status: Planned for a future release
Discussion: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/23682/marking-nonduplicates/
Switch users
Provide a way to switch between multiple user accounts via logging on/off.
Status: No elegant way to accomplish this has been discussed. No plans to implement in the near future. This is partially possible using Firefox profiles.
Discussion: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/11093/using-zotero-in-a-public-library/
Visually mark items
Provide ability to mark items so they visually stand out in the UI. E.g. star, highlight, etc.
Status: Planned for next major release
Discussion: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/1787/2/simple-marking-of-items/
Move items between collections
Move items instead of “copying” them when dragging-dropping from one collection to another.
Status: Generally planned to allow this via drag+key-modifier, no short-term plans to implement.
Discussion: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/1787/2/simple-marking-of-items/
Specify sync preferences per collection
Indicate whether attachments/items will be synced for individual collections
Status: Not possible with current sync architecture
Custom Fields/Item Types
Create custom item types and custom metadata fields
Status: No immediate plans to implement. Possible future feature.
Comments: Zotero item types represent different ways that items are cited in bibliographies. Adding custom item types and fields makes it nearly impossible to support them in automatic bibliography generation, which is one of the major purposes of Zotero. Other issues include synchronization with the Zotero server and data exchange with other users.
Discussion: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/15636/1/changes-to-fields-and-item-types-for-zotero-31-/
Batch Editing
Editing of metadata fields and tags for multiple items at once
Ticket: https://www.zotero.org/trac/ticket/364
Discussion:
Status: Planned for next major release
Re-fetch metadata for an item
Provide a way to update/re-retrieve metadata for an item already in the library.
Status: Planned in conjunction with improved retrieve metadata feature. No specific timeline, faster implementation depends on community help.
Discussion: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/23748/automating-massimport-from-pdfs/
Hierarchical Item Types (e.g. Edited Volumes and Chapters)
Allow for items to have a hierarchical relationship, e.g. have chapters as sub-items of an edited volume.
Status: Planned in the medium to long run, but implementation poses significant challenge & requires change in data layer.
Group Libraries
See who added an item
Provide a field that indicates which user within a group added an item to the group library.
Status: Planned for a future release
Check if group item exists in local library
Provide a way to check if an item in the group library is present in the local/personal library.
Status: Planned for a future release
Ticket:
Merge identical items inserted from different libraries
With multiple uers working on a single document, multiple citations referring to the same item can be inserted from different personal libraries. There should be a way to merge these citations into one.
Status: Planned for a future release
Discussion: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/23719/word-plugin-and-groups-make-it-still-more-difficult-to-cite-from-the-wrong-libraries/
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/23292/replacing-citations-with-a-copy-from-different-library/
Do not copy tags to group library
When copying items from personal to group libraries, personal tags should not be copied.
Status: Planned for a future release
Finer control of user permissions
Create more user roles in group libraries that would allow finer control over who can add, edit, delete items/attachments.
Status: ?????????
Discussion: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/22731/roles-for-group-libraries-a-proposal/
Word Processor Integration
Zotero toolbar in its own MS Word ribbon
Put Zotero toolbar in its own ribbon in Microsoft Word 2007 and later.
Status: ?????????
Discussion: ????????????
Do not spell-check citations inserted by Zotero
Exclude text inserted by Zotero from being spell-checked
Status: Possible in MS Word via macros (see discussion). Possible future feature.
Discussion: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/16540/exempt-zotero-fields-from-being-spellchecked-word-2010/
RTF Scan
Citation disambiguation
Provide a way to disambiguate citations published by the same author in the same year.
Status: Planned for a future release
Discussion: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/23453/rtfscan-disambiguation/
General improvements
Allow for citation features such as suppress author, prefix and suffix, locators other than pages and improve reliability.
Status: Generally planned, help wanted (as the entire RTF scan is handled in a single javascript file it's ideally suited for patches.
Import/Export
Retrieve metadata from PDF based on file name
Use file name to improve retrieval of metadata for a PDF document.
Status: Planned as part of general improvements of retrieve metadata. Details still unclear. Help appreciated.
Ticket: https://github.com/zotero/zotero/issues/99
Discussion: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/23748/automating-massimport-from-pdfs/ , http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/22882/ ,
Use magic wand with multiple identifiers at the same time
Enable pasting of a list of identifiers into a magic wand box and retrieve metadata for all of them.
Status: Available as of 4.0
Discussion: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/12673/add-multiple-items-by-identifier/ The biggest concern is to come up with a good separator between identifiers.