How can I view the all items in a folder and its sub-folder ?

codyliu

Dear All ,

For example , I created a folder A , and a subfolder B within it .

A - x
| - y
| - B ： z
| - w

When I click A , I can't view the files within B , the z item .
Is it possible to view the all files in a folder ?

Thank you .

dstillman

Hidden pref: extensions.zotero.recursiveCollections

codyliu

Thanks !

Heckscher

I often want to search for some criterion (tags, authors, etc) within a folder and its subfolders. Is there any way to do this without (temporarily) resetting the recursiveCollections preference, which is pretty clumsy?

dstillman

There's the "search subfolders" option of advanced/saved searches, but that may not be quite what you want.

The quick search bar will eventually get some drop-down options, and a recursive search option might be a possibility.

Bionatsci

a recursive search option might be a possibility.

Just an idea, but couldn't this be more powerfully and intuitively handled by allowing the selection of multiple collections at once? I'm thinking something along the lines of Ctrl+click (or OSX equivalent) to select multiple collections, Shift+click to select a collection and all of it's subcollections.

This would allow browsing as well as searching of "supersets" of collections and would be more versatile than a recursive search option.

I saw this feature mentioned somewhere else on the forums, I'll post a link if I find it again.

P.S. Just a note on implementation. It would be helpful if the selection was a "toggle" i.e. Ctrl clicking on a selected collection would deselect it. This would allow, for example, Ctrl+A to select all collections and then the deselecting of one or two. Also, it would be great if you could add items to all selected collections at once when using the address bar icon / create new item from current page.

Heckscher

Adding recursive capability to the quick search would be terrific. The additions suggested by Bioniatsci would be also nice but less crucial (for me, at least).

Bionatsci

I saw this feature mentioned somewhere else on the forums, I'll post a link if I find it again.

Found it:

http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/700/equivalence-of-collections-and-tags/#Item_12

The post is rather long so I've extracted the section relevant to this thread:

Similarly resolving 1b would seem to be useful for people using collections. 1b is the very reason I don't use collections, and instead only use tags. Being able to filter with boolean AND by selecting multiple tags is just too useful, even though it means I have no hierarhical structuring available to me. Could 1b be resolved by allowing multi-select (by holding Ctrl (or the equiv in Mac OS X)) in the Collections (and saved searches) list?

I am in the opposite situation to Andrew Moylan, who wrote this post: heirarchical structuring is important to me, so I mainly use collections, even though I would find the multi-selection capabilitites of tags very useful.

mr.roma

Hi,
I had the same question as you guys and I found the answer (7 years latter): in advanced search you can select to search in a specific collection (and check the box ''search subcollection'') . Once you've saved this search, it is now a searchable folder simply with the search bar.

I've uploaded a screenshot
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5hjhzR-8S8qMVBpLXltTHk4VDA