Two simple feature request: drop stack & copy note

kithairon

I often wish a 'drop stack' as a temporary space to place a note, a pdf or any other attachment and think this would be a great feature for Zotero. I regularly download a pdf (with title xyz.pdf) from the net or wish to move an attachment from one entry to another for which much scrolling is needed: xyz.pdf is down under 'x' while my newly created entry is sorted by author's name (or title) and maybe at quite some alphabetical distance to the file I wish to attach. The scrolling with a selected attachment 'on the hook' seems quite tedious. A drop stack space (maybe in the left pane under the cogwheel) where an item could be dragged to and temporarily parked before being attached to its destinaton entry would be great.

Request numer two: an option in the context menu to copy the subitem (webshot, note) under selection. I know duplication is possible, but duplication places the new item simply at the old place from where it then has to dragged 'on hook' to wherever it's supposed to go. I'm looking for a simple copy/paste option without having to drag a duplicate and scroll my way up or down.

I'm aware that this is small stuff; thanks for considering anyway.

mark

How about using a collection for this? If you give it a name that starts with a unicode character that is sorted before [a-Z], it will be at the top of your list. You'd have to add the destination entry to the same collection to get them close together.

The other thing you can do is have a subfolder in your /zotero/ folder (i.e. in the file system) for these stray PDFs. That's what I often do. When I've got the metadata in order, I simply drag the PDFs from the file system onto the destination entry.

kithairon

Thanks mark; the collection suggestion is a nice idea – and works quite well as a workaround (I've been doing this in my file system and never thought of it in Zotero). Still think though a 'drop stack' would be a useful and elegant feature for handling 'loose' files in Zotero.

mark

I agree — the fact that Zotero is not exactly easy with dragging "on hook" as you call it is the main reason I avoid dumping loose files in Zotero. There is definitely room for improvement there.

ajlyon

Would item copy + paste within Zotero be possible to implement? It would address the issue here, I think.