Keep notes up to date
Update a single literature note or a batch of notes when your Zotero data changes, without losing your own writing.
When your Zotero metadata or annotations change, you can refresh your literature notes to match. ZotLit preserves your own writing by updating only the parts it manages.
Update a single note
These commands are available from the command palette and from the right-click context menu on a literature note file. They only appear when the active file is a literature note (a note with a zotero-key frontmatter field).
Update the full note
Open a literature note
Open the literature note you want to update.
Run the update command
Open the command palette (Ctrl+P on Windows/Linux, Cmd+P on macOS) and run:
ZotLit refreshes the frontmatter. A note made with the default template has no managed region, so its body stays as you wrote it, and the notice reads Properties updated. This note has no managed region, so its body stayed unchanged. Its annotations query block stays current on its own.
When your note has a managed region (%%zt-managed%% ... %%/zt-managed%%), ZotLit also re-renders it. A note has one when your own profile has a {% managed %} block, or when an earlier default created it. Your writing outside the managed region stays untouched, and a query block in the region keeps any view settings you saved in its toolbar. A notice confirms: Literature note updated.
To stop ZotLit re-rendering a region, delete the %%zt-managed%% and %%/zt-managed%% lines. Later updates leave the body untouched.
Image and ink excerpts are prepared before the note is written. Both PDF readers can stay closed. A changed image gets a new filename; other notes and old image files keep their saved versions.
If refresh fails, ZotLit keeps a verified image already referenced by the note. If none is available, it writes an explanation and source link. See Import outcomes for the summary counts.
Update metadata only
To refresh frontmatter without touching the note body, run:
ZotLit: Update literature note metadataA notice confirms: Metadata updated. The note body is not changed.
Context menu
You can also right-click a literature note file in the file explorer. The ZotLit section of the context menu offers Update literature note, Update literature note metadata, Overwrite literature note, and Copy item key.
Update notes in batch
ZotLit Companion, the Zotero add-on, starts batch updates from Zotero.
Select items in Zotero
In Zotero, select one or more items in your library. Right-click to open the context menu, then choose ZotLit > Create or Update Literature Notes (or Update Literature Note Metadata for metadata only).
Confirm in Obsidian
Obsidian opens a confirmation dialog titled Update literature notes. It shows how many notes will be created or updated, grouped by status: Update (…), Create (…), and Not found (…).
When your vault holds added profiles, the dialog also carries a profile control for the new notes. See Choose the profile for new notes.
Select Update notes to proceed.
Review the summary
After the batch completes, a summary appears: Done. … created, … updated, … failed. With added profiles, the created and updated counts name the profile they ran under, as in … created under ….
To update every note at once, run ZotLit: Create or update all literature notes from the Obsidian command palette. This skips the Zotero selection step and covers every library in your library scope.
While more than one library contributes items, the confirmation names the library beside each status heading, so identical statuses stay apart. One contributing library keeps the plain headings.
If a selected library is missing from your Zotero database, the run continues over the rest and the confirmation states how many libraries it skipped. If none of your selected libraries is available, no dialog opens and a notice reports No library in the library scope is available.
Large selections
A selection too large to fit in a protocol link falls back to an HTTP connection to Obsidian. If the ZotLit server is not enabled in Obsidian, Zotero shows a notice asking you to enable it or select fewer items.
Security prompt in Zotero
Zotero may show a confirmation dialog each time it opens an obsidian://
link. See Suppress the Zotero security
prompt to disable it.
You can also open a single note from Zotero by right-clicking one item and choosing Open Literature Note in Obsidian from the top-level context menu.
Overwrite a note
ZotLit: Overwrite literature note is a separate, destructive command. It replaces the entire note body with a fresh render of the note's profile document. Frontmatter keys managed by ZotLit are refreshed; other frontmatter keys you added are kept.
A confirmation dialog appears before the overwrite proceeds.
Overwrite uses the same excerpt snapshot rules as a full update. A metadata-only update leaves the note body's image links unchanged.
Notes created with ZotLit v1
Literature notes created with ZotLit v1 do not have a managed region. Running Update literature note on a v1 note refreshes its frontmatter but leaves the body untouched, showing the notice Properties updated. This note has no managed region, so its body stayed unchanged.
To fully refresh a v1 note's body, use ZotLit: Overwrite literature note. It rebuilds the body from the note's profile document. A v1 note carries no zotlit-profile field, so the Default profile rebuilds it.
See also
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