That is not true, actually. It didn’t work out, at least for me.
You can actually use regex for your attachment content if you have indexed your files beforehand:
Searches here didn’t work for me, as the Zotero process hit 10GB in RAM usage and another 30GB was used for virtual memory and still no output.
What one can do also to query Zotero and non-Zotero items (on an external hard drive, for instance) is to have AnyTXT Searcher (OS: Windows) index every folder where PDFs and other items are located (.mobi, .mmap, etc.) and use that program.
But again, that program’s GUI can also go ‘Not responding’ on you.
Looks like no recent developments have been done on this program, either…
Luckily, AnyTXT Searcher has an API (beta, but works) which we can leverage with a Python script.
Claude.AI’s latest model will be able to handle that (just make sure you set compromises so you don’t have to wait too long for 100+ files with content generated).
So now I have the following setup:
All my Zotero PDF’s (52GB worth of PDF’s) indexed, with index txt files copied to md files to a Vault with index files linked to master md files.
That vault can be queried with near-instant results.
All my Zotero plus other non-Zotero items (140GB) indexed with AnyTXT Searcher and queriable through its API via a Python script, whose output when copied into a markdown file in Obsidian, will have a zotero link to be clicked if the file was in my Zotero storage, or just a path on the external drive if Zotero link unavailable.
This setup is far better than I have ever envisioned having, certainly better than what I have seen on the forum offered (DocFetcher related stuff).
EDIT.
Even better (more cosily achieved) results via the Interactivity plugin: