How do I find out what collection is my paper in?

BrendanTCD

Hi there

Is there any way of identifying in which Collection a document is located when I do a search for it?

When a library gets as big as mine with so many collections it can be difficult to locate documents, and as a result similar documents on the same subject stored in the same collection, unless I can remember the name of the collection I stored them in.

This feature may already be there but I cant seem to find it.

Any help is much appreciated

kithairon

Select the item in question in the middle section of Zotero and press the alt-key. The collection that contains the item will show up with a yellow highlight.

BrendanTCD

Thanks for the reply Kithairon

Is that the same when using a Mac? Nothing seems to be happening when I try it.

Thanks

kithairon

Your item may not be in any collection. Best to start with an item that definitely is in a collection and verify it works. There is a useful page here: here. I'm on a Mac; it's the option/alt key on a Mac, Ctrl on Win and Alt on Linux.

BrendanTCD

Thanks,

I was already clicked on the collection so the yellow highlight did not show up. Once I clicked off it, it worked perfectly.

Thanks

dstillman

Main page about this: http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/collections_containing_an_item

hamfeh

@kithairon
Brilliant! Thanks

SaulHumanRights

I have tried this in all sorts of ways on Mac and PC, to no avail. I search (advanced search) and then select the attachment item, and double click while holding down the cmd or Ctrl key and the result is to identify the item in an aggregated list of all items in all collections, without any identification of which sub-collections it appears in.

Please help, as I have 100s of items in my collections.

dstillman

@SaulHumanRights: It sounds like you're confusing two different things: double-clicking items in the Advanced Search window to select them in the library view and showing what collections an item is in from the library view. See the linked page for the latter.

SaulHumanRights

@dstillman Is this the link you are referring to:
http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/collections_containing_an_item

This is no clearer to me, in order to see the sub-collections in which a searched item is located in.

Could you give me a step by step description? What I am doing is as follows:
1. Advanced Search.
2. Double click item that takes me to Library view.
3. I can then open the item, however, I have no idea of which sub-collection it comes from.
4. I have tried to select item and press cmd key in Advanced Search and Library and nothing happens.

Am I missing something? In the past I have seen the sub-collection yellow highlighted in Library view. This is no longer the case.

dstillman

The page doesn't say anything about the Cmd key. I promise you the instructions are correct.

SaulHumanRights

Sorry, I have now tried the alt key (which is the option key in Mac) and it does not highlight the sub-collection location of the item.

I have tried selecting the item and holding down the alt key both in the Advanced Search and Library.

dstillman

Again, it works in the library view, not Advanced Search. If you click an item in the items list, drag it to a collection, and hold down Option, it will highlight the collection in yellow. If that's not working for you, you may have some plugin installed that's breaking this, but this feature has existed for approximately 15 years, and it definitely works.

SaulHumanRights

I tried and still nothing. What plugin would be breaking it, as far as you may know?

dstillman

You'll need to debug this. Just disable all your plugins to start.

SaulHumanRights

Presumably a restart also?

moorugi

@BrendanTCD Did you figure out the problem? I am using Zotero 6 , tried reinstalling the program, and removing the profile but nothing helped

enozkan

While the item is selected in the center pane, hold down the Option key (macOS), Control key (Windows), or Alt key (Linux). If no collection or subcollection is highlighted on the left-hand pane, that means it is an unfiled item: You did not place it under a collection.

You can find a list of all your unfiled items if you click on "Unfiled Items" at the bottom of your collections in the left pane.

Try dragging that item into a relevant collection on the left, hold down the mentioned key above, and that collection's name will turn yellow on the left hand side. Since an item can be in many collections, multiple collection names should turn yellow if that's the case.

LWTaylor

I've been playing around with this as sometimes it worked and then recently it hadn't been (I'm on windows 11) when I needed it to. Found this thread in an effort to find out what I was doing wrong.

I've discovered, in my case at least, if I press and release the Ctrl button at my normal speed of typing, nothing happens.

However, if I press and hold down the Ctrl button for a second or two, hey-presto, the folder containing the item is highlighted! (Then I can press Ctrl again to de-highlight it).

Just though I'd share in case anyone else having the same issue.

dstillman

@LWTaylor: You have to hold the key down, as explained on the linked documentation page, and the highlight appears as long as you hold it down. If you're seeing something different, there's something wrong on your system, but please start a new thread for that.

moorugi

Hello all, I have a weird problem this works on my Windows machine but not on my Linux machine (Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS). I found another post saying that for Zotero 7, there might be some errors regarding this: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/107378/zotero-7-beta-identifying-collections-key-malfunction-on-ubuntu-22-04#latest
However, I have version 6.0.30, Does anyone have an idea what could be the problem?
To be exact, when I hold down the ALT key, the highlight of the selected item shrinks a bit, but nothing happens on the collections pane.