Combining contents of subcollections

meisel

I have added multiple exported libraries from my students to my zotero collection. when the files were imported, a subcollection entitled "Imported date..." is created for each separate collection. This may seem like a dumb question, but how do I combine all of these separate subcollections into one folder? My goal is to be able to better organize the files and eliminate duplicate entries. thanks.

dstillman

You can create a saved search that combines items from those other subcollections using Collection conditions and ANY mode, and then drag all the items from the search into a new collection. If there are subcollections in the imported collections, you may need to select them manually in the search window.

Alternatively, you could create a new top-level collection, drag each imported collection into it, turn on recursiveCollections, and then click on the top-level collection to view all the items (and, if you want, drag from there to a new collection so you could disable recursiveCollections mode and remove all the imported collections).

meisel

Thanks...I tried using recursiveCollections feature (not sure what that does...)...I then dragged subcollection into upper collection. But I was not certain that all entries were pulled into upper collection so I have been manually cross checking (a tedious process). Once I found they were all there, I removed subcollection...but now I find that the corresponding entries were removed from upper collection! Help! All I want to do is put all of the entries and associated files/notes into one collection...there's gotta be an easier way to do this...another related issue is eliminating duplicated entries...suggestions? thanks Dan.

dstillman

Either of the methods I provided above will work, but you'll need to follow them exactly.

recursiveCollections shows items from all subcollections of a collection rather than just the direct child items. You can't remove the subcollection until you've copied the (recursively displayed) items to a new collection.

At this point, the items from the imported collection that you removed are in your library. You could perhaps sort the library by Date Added to find them. If you haven't added or imported any other items recently, that ordering might be enough to organize the items into collections.

meisel

Got it! Thanks for the rapid response.