Moving large number of items to a collection

scribbler

I have several hundred items in My Library, but as I begin work on another project I'd like to copy these to a collection. I find I can drag two or three at a time but when I try select all and then attempt to drag these over, Zotero seems to choke and nothing is accomplished. Any other way to do this (besides doing a few at a time)? Thanks.

dstillman

What version of Zotero are you using?

Zotero 2.0 won't try to generate Quick Copy output if you drag more than 50 items (configurable in the Export pane of the Zotero prefs). Zotero 1.0 will.

scribbler

Thanks for that prompt response. I'm using 1.0.10. Sounds like I should upgrade to 2.0

adamsmith

I understand the question differently from Dan- I think 2.0 will probably be better anyway (because it generally performs better and more stable) but moving items to a collection isn't the same as quick copy.
Regardless of what you do, you should probably drag batches of not more than about 50 items at once to your new collection(s) that should work.

dstillman

Zotero doesn't have any way of knowing where the drag is going, so it has to generate Quick Copy output at the beginning of the drag anyway, even if you're only dragging to a collection. (It's possible there's a way around this, but not that I've seen.) This is why that pref was added.

scribbler

Thanks guys. I think I need to exercise a little patience and just execute this in bunches, which I will do.