Upgrade StorageFeature request: modification dates of notes should contribute to Date Modified sorting of items
I like to sort all my items in the main view by Date Modified. It lets me see what I worked on last/have been working on recently, sort of like a work log. But there is a problem: I might spend all day working on some notes about a paper, the paper is an item in my library and I add the notes to the item. But the modification date of the paper doesn't change, the notes have their own modification dates but these don't contribute to the sort order when sorting items by modification date.
What I want it some way to sort everything by modification date such that if I've just been editing a note that is attached to an item, the item will bubble up to the top of the sorted list, because even though the item itself has not been modified recently, one of its attached notes has been.
Otherwise, when you work on notes attached to items, they just get lost in your gigantic library. There's no easy way to find those six notes you worked in the past week or so.
What I want it some way to sort everything by modification date such that if I've just been editing a note that is attached to an item, the item will bubble up to the top of the sorted list, because even though the item itself has not been modified recently, one of its attached notes has been.
Otherwise, when you work on notes attached to items, they just get lost in your gigantic library. There's no easy way to find those six notes you worked in the past week or so.
While it may not be quite as convenient, you can achieve a similar effect to what you're after, with greater flexibility, using a saved search. If you click on the spyglass icon to the left of the quick search field, you can set up a search on Date Modified, with a term "is after", and a date of your choice. If you tick the "include parent and child items of matching items", you should get the whole item set associated with anything modified since the start date for the search. Click on "Save search", the search will be added as a virtual folder at the bottom of the library tree. You can edit a saved search anytime by right-clicking on it.
There is also a plan to allow saved searches to be moved around in the folder hierarchy, which will make them even friendlier: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/10214/enable-to-save-search-as-a-subcollection/
I don't think that modifying a note should update the modification date of the item the note belongs to, notes have their own modification dates, rather that when items are sorted by modification date it should not simply be the modification date of the item that is used for the sorting, it should be whichever date is most recent from the modification dates of the item and all its children. This would mean that if I worked on a child of an item, say a note, but did not update the item itself, then when I sorted by modification date that item would still pop up to the top of the list because its note was modified recently. In my opinion this is the right sorting behaviour, because when I sort my items by modification date I'm doing it because I want to see things in the order that I last worked on them. Does that make sense?