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Using Table of Contents for sourcebooks

Aug 16, 20242 min read

Description

This workflow lets you do the following things:

  • search for PDFs by category
  • click on a link in the Table of Contents note to open the PDF to the relevant page

Plugins used

  • Dataview
  • Templater

You need to have purchased the relevant PDFs

This workflow facilitates the organizing and finding part of PDFs; it doesn’t give you access to the PDFs themselves. You’ll still need to have purchased the PDFs of the sourcebooks mentioned. I do not condone piracy.

Zotero

This workflow also requires another app that lets you link to pages of PDFs. Choose one of the following or similar:

Instructions

  1. In Zotero, go to Tools > Zutilo Preferences.
  2. In the Interface tab, scroll down to Copy select item links and toggle the radio button for it that is marked Zotero context menu. Optionally, assign a shortcut to the same thing in the Shortcuts tab as well.
  3. In Obsidian, choose a book from the sources folder that I have Table of Contents for and that you also have the PDF for. Check List of Sources for a list of all the sources in this vault.
  4. Find the PDF in Zotero. Right click on it and select Copy select item links. You should have something that looks like this: zotero://select/library/items/NJW6TEUI. In this case, NJW6TEUI is your Zotero ID for this PDF.
  5. In Obsidian, open up the note of the source in question. For example, Secrets of Magic.
  6. Copy the ID in the [Source] link. For example, if the link points to zotero://select/library/items/3LHL67ZM, the ID is 3LHL67ZM.
  7. Open up the Command Pane (CMD/CTRL+P) and select Global Search and Replace: Search and Replace in all files. In the Search field, enter the ID from the Obsidian note (i.e., 3LHL67ZM). In the Replace field, enter YOUR Zotero ID (i.e. NJW6TEUI from Step 4.) Hit ENTER to replace everything in all files.
  8. Give it a go by clicking on one of the Source links in Secrets of Magic. The relevant PDF should be opened to the right page!

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