Un-link a Child Item from its Parent

Driftless

Having a devil of time discovering how to Un-Link a child item from a parent, and create a new item from it.

Scenario 1: PDF dragged into Zotero accidentally gets linked under an unrelated item.
Scenario 2: Multiple Subreports initially under one item need their own citation.

The tricky bit is that once a PDF is a child item, the option to retrieve metadata is no longer available... So creating a "dummy" parent, dragging the child to the new parent then trying to retrieve the meta won't work.

Thanks

aurimas

Not exactly a user-friendly solution, but you can find the PDF on your computer (right-click -> Show File) and add it to Zotero again.

(Edit: just to be clear, adding the PDF (not linking to it) directly from Zotero storage folder is safe, because Zotero will copy that PDF to a new folder. You will end up with two copies, so deleting the old one will not mess with the new one)

Driftless

Thanks - was hoping for something a little more straight-forward, but good workaround nonetheless.

adamsmith

you can just drag any attachment away from its parent and make it independent - it's just a little fidgety as there is only a relatively narrow sweet spot between to items where this will work. But it definitely does.

Jodaru

The feature to drag a child attachment (such as a PDF file) away from its parent to make the attachment independent appears to not be available in the Unfiled Items collection. Move the parent item to another folder then drag the attachment away.

maraw

Thanks, that was really useful!! Could be made more straightforward as I had this issue, 10 years after..