Unfiled and duplicated items in my library

k.chauhan2555

What are the unfiled items in my library can i delete this and if so will it delete other documents in other folders?

Also same q for the duplicated items..

TIA

aborel

Unfiled items are just not (yet) assigned to any specific collection. That's quite all right, using collections is not mandatory.

Duplicated items and how to deal with them: see https://www.zotero.org/support/duplicate_detection

Don't delete unfiled items in general. Either they are unique (and useful), or they are duplicated records and the proper solution is to merge them, not delete them.

k.chauhan2555

Thanks @aborel. I have 160 items in my unfiled but i have separate folders with all my files in there. So i can't delete it? Do i need to even do anything with it? Just worried if i delete and it deletes somewhere else in another collection

arggem

@k.chauhan2555, I'm a little confused. You say you have 160 items in Unfiled, yet you say you have separate folders with all your files. Including those 160? As @aborel indicated, by definition the 160 files are not "filed" in any collection.

When you say "separate folders" do you mean collections in Zotero, or are you referring to folders outside of Zotero, in the OS?

I just added an item to Zotero, then deleted it from Unfiled, which sent the item to the trash. It is no longer in My Library.

I'm also curious, what is your concern with having items in Unfiled? No matter how many collections an item may be in, there is only 1 actual item in your Library. (Think playlists.)

tim820

An Unfiled item exists only at the (top) Library level. If you delete it, it will be gone from your Library (actually it will be in the trash until that is automatically cleared after the #days specified under General Preferences). An Unfiled item can't be an item that is also in your Collections ... or it wouldn't be Unfiled.

So any items you have in your Collections are by definition different items to Unfiled items at the (top) Library level. The Unfiled items could be duplicates of items in your Collections (e.g. you downloaded the same thing twice); in which case you should merge the two items into one. If an Unfiled item is merged with an item that is in one or more Collections, it will no longer be Unfiled.