Attach one PDF to multiple refs?

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trueclou
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2015 5:34 pm

Attach one PDF to multiple refs?

Post by trueclou »

Hi,

I have one question that might be a quite stupid new-one I guess.

I have PDFs of the whole issue of a journal so the contain several papers (up to 15 or so). Therefore I created 15 refs for the single papers and wanted to attach the one PDF to all of them by selecting all of the new refs in the library window and drag and drop the PDF. Unfortunately this doesn't work as the PDF is attached only to the very first of the selected refs. :(
Of course, it's quite annoying to attach it to all 15 refs manually. :evil:

Is there another simple way to achieve mutilple attachments of the same PDF?

Greetings, Christoph
Jon
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Re: Attach one PDF to multiple refs?

Post by Jon »

I can't think of any -- no one has ever requested such a thing before.

Jon
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trueclou
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2015 5:34 pm

Re: Attach one PDF to multiple refs?

Post by trueclou »

Hi Jon,

thanks for replying!

Is there any chance to see this feature in a future version? I think it's astonishing that never ever someone requested it.
Anyway: as Bookends not works as expected (you CAN multiselect refs in the library window, but drag and drop only affects the first of the selected refs) one might consider this to be a bug.

Greetings,
Christoph
Jon
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Re: Attach one PDF to multiple refs?

Post by Jon »

Sure I'll look into it. But it's definitely not a bug, it's behaving as intended. But I can see how you might expect it to behave differently in this case.

Jon
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Jon
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Re: Attach one PDF to multiple refs?

Post by Jon »

BTW, the solution for your problem at this time might be to create one reference, attach the PDF to that, then use Duplicate Reference to create the 14 others. Of course the fields will have the same metadata, but that might be helpful (e.g. the journal name, date, and volume would be the same). Edit the data that are unique for each entry. Now all will have the same attachment.

Jon
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Jon
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Re: Attach one PDF to multiple refs?

Post by Jon »

I'm not sure how generally useful this feature is (how often do you have the PDF of an entire journal as opposed to the individual articles in it?) -- I'd appreciate feedback from others. But I've provisionally implemented this for the next Bookends update. If you use drag and drop or File -> Attach File, the file will be attached to all selected references, not just the first one.

Jon
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trueclou
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Re: Attach one PDF to multiple refs?

Post by trueclou »

Wow, great!

Thanks a lot,
Christoph
DeclanOB
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Joined: Thu Jun 04, 2009 10:31 am

Re: Attach one PDF to multiple refs?

Post by DeclanOB »

I can confirm that this is sometimes useful. I have occasionally wished for such a possibility.
Thanks,

Declan
trueclou
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Re: Attach one PDF to multiple refs?

Post by trueclou »

Hi,

I think just found a bug in the new multi attach feature in version 12.5.9. The multi attachment doesn't seem to work When the 'Move to attachment folder' checkbox is selected. When deselecting it everything is fine!

Greetings,
Christoph
Jon
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Re: Attach one PDF to multiple refs?

Post by Jon »

I see it, thanks. It's fixed for 12.6.0.

Jon
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swilcox
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Re: Attach one PDF to multiple refs?

Post by swilcox »

Might the solution to problem be to create 15 separate PDFs, one for each article, and attach them to the relevant citation? It's pretty easy to divide a single PDF into pieces: select the relevant pages, copy; select "New" in Preview, and paste. Then save.
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