How to search attachments ONLY

[Cassady]

Hello all,

A quick question about if I'm missing something obvious.

Due to particular choices I took regarding how I store/manage data on my laptop - I never 'imported' my PDFs into the BE Attachment folder.
I accordingly have thousands of "blank" references, with attachments linked, but no other information - which I am in the process of auto-completing, as I work through all of them.

When I 'select' one of those 'blank' references, bottom right of my screen shows the attachment Filename - as it is named in the folder where it is currently located. It is greyed out - although calling up the Inspector allows me to attach other pdf's/reveal in Finder etc.

Quick question: Can I search through those filenames inside BE12?

I now have a situation where I need to insert several citation for particular articles, that I know have been dragged into BE12 - i.e. they are somewhere in the thousands of 'blank/empty' references. The only way I can think of 'finding' the reference, in order to autocomplete, is to literally scroll through all the references in the Attachment view, to 'locate' the relevant article.

I hope my question makes sense.

I guess what I'm trying to check - is there any way to search BE12 for a reference that has not been completed yet, and has as its attachment, a PDF not imported into the BE12 attachment folder?...

[Jon]

First, you can have attachments outside of the default attachments folder and Bookends will display them. The fact that they aren't showing in Bookends means that Bookends can't find them, probably because the folder they were in was renamed (although it can be something else). Reattach one (and leave it where it is) and you'll see.

Second, you can search attached pdfs using the Find "Spotlight" search, or the Live Search "Spotlight" search. That will show references that have attachments that are found by the search. However, only pdfs in the default attachment folder (and subfolders) are searched. So in your case this would not work. If you moved the pdfs to the default folder yourself in the Finder (drag and drop), Bookends will find them. Remember, Bookends doesn't store paths to pdfs, it stores paths to folders that hold pdfs. Then is searches those folders for pdfs.

Jon
Sonny Software

P.S. None of those pdfs have DOIs? If they did you wouldn't have to do any work to have their metadata imported. Please see the video tutorial on how to get metadata once you have a pdf. It's the first link on this page:

http://www.sonnysoftware.com/VideoTutor ... rials.html

[Cassady]

First, you can have attachments outside of the default attachments folder and Bookends will display them. The fact that they aren't showing in Bookends means that Bookends can't find them, probably because the folder they were in was renamed (although it can be something else). Reattach one (and leave it where it is) and you'll see.

Second, you can search attached pdfs using the Find "Spotlight" search, or the Live Search "Spotlight" search. That will show references that have attachments that are found by the search. However, only pdfs in the default attachment folder (and subfolders) are searched. So in your case this would not work. If you moved the pdfs to the default folder yourself in the Finder (drag and drop), Bookends will find them. Remember, Bookends doesn't store paths to pdfs, it stores paths to folders that hold pdfs. Then is searches those folders for pdfs.

Jon
Sonny Software

P.S. None of those pdfs have DOIs? If they did you wouldn't have to do any work to have their metadata imported. Please see the video tutorial on how to get metadata once you have a pdf. It's the first link on this page:

http://www.sonnysoftware.com/VideoTutor ... rials.html

Thanks Jon.

Re your 1st point.

I wasn't making myself clear - they are "showing" inside BE - as in, I can see the pdf content when the Attachment View is selected.
The problem lies with the DOI, or lack thereof.

The majority of my PDF's have been downloaded from Law/Social Sciences databases, through my University's library website. If I call up the information menu in Finder, after the "Where From:", the following is listed, as an example:

Code: Select all

 http://content.ebscohost.com.ez.sun.ac.za/pdf10/pdf/2001/JLR/01Sep01/5436793.pdf?T=P&P=AN&K=5436793&S=R&D=buh&EbscoContent=dGJyMMvl7ESep7U4yOvsOLCmr0uep7JSsKm4SbWWxWXS&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGqsEq0rrVPuePfgeyx44Dt6fIA, http://web.ebscohost.com.ez.sun.ac.za/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=3561b74f-74f9-4d52-bd7c-f948a3e7a4af%40sessionmgr15&vid=1&hid=22 

This pdf was downloaded off the Ebscohost website, with my University as the licensee(?). Presumably BE cannot use the above to pull-in the relevant information.

As a result - if I drop my pdf's onto BE12, and make the mistake to opt-in to the 'rename', as I've just done this afternoon - then the files are simply renamed "Anonymous1574" or something similar. Consequently, I have hundreds of "blank" references in BE, that I need to work through manually, and autocomplete. Thankfully, Google Scholar finds most with Author and Title....

The above gave rise to my initial query.

Let's say I'm working through a section of my dissertation typed up long before I purchased BE. I want to replace the manually-typed citation, with a {BE} one. My problem - even though I know that the attachment/pdf is somewhere inside BE12, it's attached to a "blank" reference, since BE12 couldn't use the DOI (or there wasn't one) when I initially dropped the file into BE.

Since my files were still in their original locations - I cannot use BE's Spotlight search. So I cannot 'find' the reference, by 'searching' for the attachment filename.

So if I understand all of the above correctly, the solution will be to drag/drop all my pdf's from their original locations, NOT rename them, but have them placed inside the BE attachment folder. That way, I will presumably be able to use the BE Spotlight search to 'find' my as-of-yet-not-Autcompleted/blank references?

Does that sound right?

[Jon]

This pdf was downloaded off the Ebscohost website, with my University as the licensee(?). Presumably BE cannot use the above to pull-in the relevant information.

Bookends looks for a doi in the PDF itself. Where the pdf came from is irrelevant.

Since my files were still in their original locations - I cannot use BE's Spotlight search. So I cannot 'find' the reference, by 'searching' for the attachment filename.

So if I understand all of the above correctly, the solution will be to drag/drop all my pdf's from their original locations, NOT rename them, but have them placed inside the BE attachment folder. That way, I will presumably be able to use the BE Spotlight search to 'find' my as-of-yet-not-Autcompleted/blank references?

Does that sound right?

Yes, that right.

Jon
Sonny Software