Any way to search for folder name?

italoalves

I have years of projects organized in folders, sometimes with subfolders or nested in parent folders, which sometimes makes it difficult to quickly find the folder I'm looking for on the left-hand menu. I was wondering if there is any way to search through the folder names.

I came across this feature request from 2018 (https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/73079/feature-request-search-for-folder-name). Has this been implemented in any way, or are there plans to implement it?

Thanks!

Cameron Ellis

Commenting to signal-boost.

This feature has been requested a few times as far as I've seen (2017: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/290260, 2018: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/73079/feature-request-search-for-folder-name, 2020: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/86177/feature-request-search-library-for-collections) and advice has been given that it's planned, but there's no ETA. And as far as I know it hasn't been implemented.

I presume it's wiser for us to presume that it's not going to happen. But if there's a way to support it happening / increase the likelihood of it happening please advise. I presume there's still no ETA, but if possible it would be good to know if it's next on the list, or what other features are ahead of it in the queue.

Perhaps if everyone who wants this feature adds a comment to this post that would help by demonstrating how much demand there is for it, compared to the other requested features?

Happy to be instructed on the correct approach to advocating for features if this isn't it. And to be clear, my intention is to request humbly, not demand.

Thanks for considering my comment. :)

tim820

It would probably help if people outlined specific examples where the limited existing facility is not adequate to find the collections they want:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/314195/#Comment_314195

Cameron Ellis

I think it's the same as any other use-case for search as opposed to filtering by the start of something / having the correct sequence. It would be helpful to be able to find all instances of collections and/or sub-collections that have a particular term in the their name / particular terms, regardless of where in the name the term is.

The terms by which I group a set of items isn't always those that are used in their content or metadata. So I add them to a collection / sub-collection in order to group them together in a way that makes sense for me. My understanding is that's the intended use of collections and sub-collections. But I can't always remember the order in which I put the terms in the collection / sub-collection's name, so the limited existing facility isn't a reliable solution to me finding an existing collection / sub-collection I've started on something, or confirming if I have started one.

And even if I can remember the order of the terms in the name, I can't always remember the collection that I put a sub-collection in, so if I have to use the limited existing facility I would have to expand each collection and check each one until I found it, and if I wanted to check if that was the only place I had created such a sub-collection I'd have to check all of them.

Given the previous communications that the feature is planned, I presume there's acceptance of the validity of the use-case / desire for the feature. What isn't clear to me is the priority placed on building it compared to the other planned additions / improvements.

adamsmith

I presume it's wiser for us to presume that it's not going to happen.

It's really not. Planned but no ETA is the standard response for any planned feature that isn't about to be released. There are many of them, and priority is a complex mix of importance, how hard it is to do, how well it fits with other things currently developed, etc., so I'm afraid you are just not going to get more than that. If you are interested in working at yourself, you can ask on the Dev list about parameters for a patch likely to be accepted

tim820

As to how such a search feature might look to the user, it could be similar to the search field for tags (which does find text embedded within tags); except at the top of the collections pane. It could either limit the displayed list to collections satisfying the search term, or it could just highlight those collections that do (similar to the display when pressing Ctrl to show which collections an item belongs to).

rickyweb

I also request this feature. It is really helpful for a large library containing over 10000 references and 1000 collections.

atagliaf

I would like to very kindly and humbly ask for the search folder capability. In my personal priority scale, it is at first place.

Tampelwhat1

Zotero's search function as of today still does not include folder names in the search. This has come up repeatedly as a shortcoming over many years of Zotero use. It has caused my folders to proliferate unnecessarily. It would be very valuable to include folders that match in search results.

dstillman

@Tampelwhat1: Upgrade to Zotero 7.

Tampelwhat1

Thank you, I am using Zotero 7.0.7. When I search on a folder name, the results show articles with that name and also articles contained in folders with that name, but as far as I can tell there is no way to have the folder names also appear in the search result. I have so many folders now that I make duplicates, and also have a hard time curating my folders. Maybe the place to add it would be under View/Columns and have Folder name be one of the columns?

adamsmith

It's a separate search at the top of the left-hand panel:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u2433/2jxnhpaoasdje4ky7l56.png

I don't think mixing collection names with general search is a good idea -- the only think that'd make logical sense would be to list all items in a collection that matches the search and that'd not be terribly useful.

Tampelwhat1

Thank you!!! This is a great way to do it...glad I asked, I might never have found it.