Collection and Subcollection Levels: Displaying Items in the Middle Column

brycegc
The "My Library" level of the Left Column automatically displays every item across all of my collections in the Middle Column, right? My understanding is that if I remove something at this top level, it disappears everywhere.

I can create a hierarchy of Collections folders within My Library. I can place items directly within a Collection or within a Subcollection folder inside of it or, apparently, both. When I organize my items in Subcollection folders (parallel to my Collections within My Library), I expected to be able to view all of the files across Subcollections in the Middle Column; however, this does not seem to be the case. The Middle Column is empty for a Collection full of Subcollection folders.

Would it make sense to have each Collection act like the top My Library folder?

Or would a better method of organization given the current system be to just dump everything within a Collection - not bothering to use Subcollection folders, so I can see all the items at once in a collection - and use Tags as the main method of organization?
  • noksagt
    http://www.zotero.org/support/hidden_prefs
    recursiveCollections
  • brycegc
    ok, I modified that, but shortly after - and I have no idea if this is related, I got an error message telling me to restart firefox. I did, reopened Zotero and the contents of My Library are gone. It looks like it did when I first opened it.

    I tried to "import" the files showing up in my Zotero folder, but that doesn't seem to work.
  • dstillman
    Send in an error report using Report Errors under the gear menu and post the Report ID here.

    Then turn off recursiveCollections and restart and see if that fixes the problem.
  • brycegc
    thanks for quick response.

    I already sent in the error report, and I remember briefly seeing a Report ID # - is there a way to retrieve that # from Zotero?

    I put recursiveCollections back to the default false and restarted, but it did not restore My Library - still only contains the Zotero - Quick Start Guide with no collections.

    Since my Zotero storage folder is still intact, I went to preferences and made sure the link was to the correct location. It was, and I reselected it just to make sure. Restarted Firefox, and still nothing.
  • dstillman
    Send in another error report and post the ID here.
  • brycegc
    I should have mentioned this in the last post - the "Report errors..." button is greyed out and unclickable.
  • dstillman
    Did you receive a message saying your database had become damaged and was being replaced with a new, empty database?

    Open your data directory and let us know what zotero.sqlite.* files you see, along with their sizes and timestamps.
  • brycegc
    I don't remember the exact error message. It showed up in the middle column of Zotero and everything in the L & R columns seemed to go blank. It said I needed to restart firefox, so I did.

    Navigating to my data directory manually through the finder seems to reveal different contents than using the method of accessing it through advanced preferences. Odd.

    They both have the exact same directory paths.
    In one, other files I have in the folder appear, and in the other (accessed through Zotero prefs) it is just the Zotero folder.

    The files in the first are: (Times are in PST)
    zotero.sqlite 1.9MB Today, 2:25PM
    zotero.sqlite.bak 1.9MB Yesterday, 4:16PM
    also:
    pdfinfo-MacIntel
    pdfinfo-MacIntel.version
    pdftotext-MacIntel
    pdftotext-MacIntel.version
    storage (folder)

    and in the second version:
    zotero.sqlite 1.5MB Today, 2:26PM
    zotero.sqlite.bak 1.5MB Today, 2:26PM
    storage (folder, but strangely with different contents than the storage folder reached when navigating manually to what looks to me like the same location)
  • dstillman
    I think you'll want to look a bit more closely at the full path being used. The first is clearly the one you want.
  • brycegc
    You're right.
    Via the finder, I had moved one of the middle level folders into another folder initially on the same level.

    Next time Zotero wrote to its own folder within that moved folder, it created a new Zotero folder after recreating the entire path of folders above it to that original location.

    The only difference in the folder path names was that one mid-level folder, which the original Zotero folder now had because I had moved it down a level, and the new Zotero-created one did not.

    Thanks!
  • dm.zhdanov
    I have a question related to this topic. Is it possible to visually distinguish in the middle column the items belonging to selected collection from items belonging to its subcollections when "recursiveCollections" option is set to "true"?
  • adamsmith
    if by "is it possible" you mean "is there currently a way to" the answer is no.
    As in all other cases you can identify the collection an item is in for individual items:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/collections#identifying_the_collections_an_item_is_in
    but there is no way to visualize this for all items at once.
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