[Suggestion] Option to keep the search results minimized or only show the matching items

cheflo

For many of my Zotero items, I have around 3-5 attachments. When I perform a search and the keyword is found in a subitem, the default behavior is to expand the main item and show all its subitems (with the non-matching ones greyed out). This becomes unwieldy when there are many attachments and I only see a few matches per search unless I click an item and the '-' sign to collapse all subitems.

I propose introducing an option to always show search results minimized, i.e. only show the parent item. This could be implemented in the UI as a check box next to the search bar, or in the settings menu under the search tab.

An alternative, more complicated, solution would be to only display the parent item and the matching items by default (not displaying the greyed out items, unless expanded). It would still be possible to collapse or expand all items by using the '+' and '-' symbols as it is currently. The specific view of only showing matching items would only be recoverable by performing a new search.

dstillman

As you probably know, this is the default behavior in Creator, Title, Year mode, which only searches parent items. If you still want to use one of the other modes and match on child items, you can click the items list and press "-" on the keyboard to collapse all items after searching. (It's also possible to do this via an advanced/saved search.)

I could see adding a "Expand parent items of matching items" (or something shorter) checkbox to the drop-down in the search bar where you choose the search mode.

cheflo

Thanks, I hadn't discovered that about the "Creator, Title, Year" mode! I never use it since I prefer to include the full text pdf content in my search. However, I might start using it now just because of this.

I think what you suggested with the checkbox sounds great as it would allow for searching the indexed pdfs, while retaining the collapsed layout of the returned search items!

bwiernik

For a shorter label, maybe "Show matching sub-items" or "...child items"