Deleting subcollections removes items from branch

kdb_research

I've been trying to tidy up the over-complicated collection tree that I've built up over a long time. I was surprised to work out that deleting a collection (but not its items) removes the item from the branch of the collections; it remains in the library and other collections, but it is removed from the parent of the deleted collection. This happens whether extensions.zotero.recursiveCollections is set to true or false. Perhaps this is obvious to everyone, but it does make simplifying the collection structure much more difficult.

dstillman

Not sure what you mean here. Can you provide precise steps to reproduce, including creating the collection structure?

If you create top-level collection A, subcollection B, add an item to both collections, and then move subcollection B to the trash, the item remains in collection A.

(Also, there's no reason to refer to recursiveCollections anymore. It's just been View → Show Items from Subcollections for years.)

kdb_research

I see this with new subcollections and new items (and with old ones). If I create a new subcollection and then capture a new item into it, I see the item in the subcollection and its parent. If I delete the subcollection (but not its items), I no longer see the item in the parent folder, but it is present in My Library. I've submitted my debug output (D695825501) in case that's useful.

dstillman

But that's only if you're using Show Items from Subcollections. The only reason you're seeing the item in the parent collection is because you've added it to a subcollection, so if you delete the subcollection, it's no longer in any descendant of the parent collection and won't be shown.

If you actually added it to both collections, the item would remain after deleting the subcollection.