Automatic Updating of Recursive Collections

brett.j.gall

With regard to the Collection documentation's notes on recursive collections (see here: https://www.zotero.org/support/collections_and_tags), see the last two sentences of the current documentation regarding switching to Recursive Collections = TRUE (from the default of FALSE) below:

"The change will take effect the next time you select a collection, but it will not apply automatically to other copies of Zotero (including between Zotero for Firefox and Zotero Standalone on the same system). Recursive collections are not currently available for the online library."

(1) It appears that switching to recursive collections through about:config in the Standalone client causes all current collections to contain the items in their sub collections. Does the above("Recursive collections are not currently available for the online library") imply that this updating will not take place if new items are added to different sub collections in the online, browser-based library? What about if Standalone is running at a later date after an item is added to a sub collection online?

(2) Can someone elaborate on the significance of "it will not apply automatically to other copies of Zotero?"

adamsmith

recursive collections are purely a question of how items are displayed. They don't affect in any sense where items "are" (items in a subcollection still are just in that subcollection). It affects all items regardless of where/how they're added.

1) means that this display setting isn't available on the webpage. Regardless of how you have the preference set up locally, on the webpage items in subcollections do not automatically appear in their parent collection.

2) preferences don't sync. i.e. just because you have recursive collections set to true in one version of Zotero, that's not automatically the case for other, synced version (e.g. on a second computer). It's not even the case if you're using Standalone and the Firefox add-on pointed to the same database. You need to set recursive collections up for every Zotero version you use.