Collection and Subcollection

zszhong

I have a collection A in my library, now I create several sub-collections(A1,A2) in it. And I move some certain items from A into A1, and some other items from A into A2.

It is expected that the items that are moved into A1 and A2 should be removed in A, but it didn't. And when I delete these items in A, the items in A1 and A2 are also deleted.

Anything wrong with me? Is there any other work flow for this purpose?

Gurdas_Sandhu

"To move items between collections instead of simply adding them to the new collection, press and hold Cmd (OS X) or Shift (Windows/Linux) and then drag the item onto a collection."

From: https://www.zotero.org/support/collections_and_tags

Also see the part on Recursive Collections, as it might be handy if you wish to reverse your default setting in future.

bwiernik

It's helpful to think of Zotero collections as more like playlists in a music application than like folders on your computer's operating system--the same item can belong to multiple collections. Because it is the same item belonging to many collections, any changes you make to the item will be reflected in every collection it belongs to. By default, when you drag an item to a collection, it adds it to the collection without removing it from any other collection it already belongs to. To "move" the item to a collection (i.e., remove it from the current one and add it to the new one), as guards says, hold down Cmd (OS X) or Shift (Windows/Linux).

Also, when you want to remove an item from a collection, choose "Remove item from collection", rather than "Move item to trash". This removes the item from the collection (e.g., Collection A) while keeping it in your library and in any other collections it belongs to (e.g., Collection A1). Typing delete on an item in a collection by default does "Remove item from collection" rather than "Move item to trash".

zszhong

@gurdas @bwiernik, thank you very much for your time and your kind answer. I'll investigate more on Zotero. I like Zotero very much! Thanks!