searching collection names; getting collection name after search

wgwinder

Can zotero search for collection names? I tend to use tags sporadically but I do put things is what is now a complicated collections tree.

Also, after a search, when I have found say 3 items, I never know where they are in the collections tree. Is there a way to find that information from the search return screen?

Thanks!

adamsmith

you can used advanced search to use for collection names.

for 2nd question: http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/collections_containing_an_item
also, double-clicking on a item from an advanced search takes you to that item, while leaving the search results window open.

wgwinder

Thanks, that is a good start.

The problem with the advanced search for collections is that it does not actually search the collection names --the user does that in the dropdown menu of the query. Once the user has searched manually and found a collection name, Z will kindly restrict the search to that collection. I was hoping for something different: I would like to search collection names themselves: Z should find for me, for example, collections names that begin with "Aristo", wherever they are in the tree.

About the second point: the back reference to the collection is also a bit limited: after finding an item, I must scroll through the collections list in order to find out where it the item lives. My tree is very big! So that manual scrolling is a pain.

It would seem more useful to return simply a list that describes the hits in the tree:

1. collection --> subcollection --> subsubcollection....
2. collection
3. collection --> subcollection
etc.

then clicking on a line would take you to the collection in the tree.

Looks like I have some feature requests!

Thanks for you quick response.

dstillman

http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/5522/search-for-folder-names/

wgwinder

Yes, that is the discussion. The workaround is ... well, a workaround. I will probably use a tweaked version of gnotero to get at the information for the moment (or dare I look at making a plugin? Sounds daunting!).

thanks for the pointer.

dstillman

It's not a workaround—it's a basic feature of all list views. But if you want to discuss it further, post to that thread.