Zotero 7 beta: Filtering collections

dstillman

This discussion was created from comments split from: Available for beta testing: Zotero, redesigned.

migugg

"filter collections": I would suggest renaming this to "search collections" as this is what it does.
It would however be great if it were actually possible to filter collections according to certain criteria. What comes to mind first is that it would be fantastic if it were possible to filter collections by those that have been last used. (I have a saved search for items added in the last few days, and sth similar for collections would be great). My use case for this would be that I work on projects where I both save new items in a topical collection, but also in a different main collection used for teaching. Filing to to these two is cumbersome because I cannot easily move from one to the other. If I could filter and show the last used 5 collections or the collections used in the last five days, I could easily move items between these.

dstillman

Technically all three "search" boxes in the main window are filters — a filter narrows down an existing list, while a search builds a set of results from scratch.

That's a reasonable request re: filtering to recently used collections, but it's not currently possible.

migugg

Ah, apologies, I overlooked that this has been suggested previously, and I see that since there is no date/time recorded for when items are added, this is not possible. Would still be nice to see in future though.
It should also be quite obvious why the workaround with prefixing collection names with various numbers or letters does not really work in some cases, because it is semi-permanent, whereas my use case really would mean that I can filter and unfilter at a push of a button.
Another workaround is to create saved searches for the alternatives, but given that saved searches can neither be added to folders, nor sorted by hand, users run into the same restrictions.