A collection search would be a nice feature to have - I'm up at around 300 collections and growing and looking for a deeply nested collection can take a little while if I can't quite remember where I put it.

Edit: at the moment I work around this by searching for an item which I remember is in the collection, and then using "alt" to find out which collection it's in, but that's less than ideal.

I also vote for search by collection name. It will enable very intuitive combinatorial search. For example, imagine having collection structure like following:

1. Topic
1.1. feedforward control
1.2. feedback control
1.3. sensing

2. By article type
2.1. experimental
2.2. simulation
2.3. review

3. By projects
3.1. PhD1
3.2. PhD2
3.3. postdoc1

Then, typing 'feedback simulation PhD1' will retrieve the articles defined by three different types of categories.

Such combinatorial search will be very intuitive and efficient. Also, the search terms will be organized in the collections column, so you never have to worry about memorizing the exact tag name, which is the problem with the current non-hierarchical tag system.

1) I have a clunky but usable workaround for this problem: when I start a new collection I insert a note with a special identifier ("=folder", in my case) and the name of the collection; you can also add tags for it. Then I can search for "=folder" and whatever tags or modifiers I want, and use the control key to find the collection. (Hey, it works!)

2) I seem to recall that Zotfile can show what collections an item is in. It seems to me it would only be a small step from that to providing the function requested in this thread.

> That's just a Zotero feature.

Yes, I do use that, but I find it a clunky way of doing it when you have lots of collections -- you have to scroll down and look for yellow highlights while holding down the control key. I believe the zotfile thing actually returned a list of the collections.

And it doesn't address the other problem, of finding a collection you know is there somewhere -- equivalent to looking for folders in Windows (or Mac, I suppose). That's why I put a marker note in each collection, because you can search for notes.

In general, it seems collections are a bit of a stepchild in the zotero world. The online library, for instance, works very well for items and tags, but the collections take forever to load -- over a minute in my case. I find collections an extremely important tool (I use them to organize arguments as I write) and wish they were somewhat easier to use.

Another vote for this feature. Seems like a pretty basic thing to have.

I too would love this feature

just curious if there has been any progress on this. Seems like a simple thing to do, and would be great for those of us with big libraries and collections nested within forgotten collections

I would use this everyday. An automatic tag would do the trick. I would also like to have a list of the collections (like it works with tags) that the file is in so I can manage them. Thanks- And I love Zotero.

Would like to be able to search collection names.

There is an open ticket for searching collection names: https://github.com/zotero/zotero/issues/1073
This doesn't mean it's going to happen any time soon (though it might), but it _does_ mean that Zotero devs are generally on board with this.

(note that github tickets are for developer use. You should not post to the ticket unless you're interested in (helping to) develop the feature).

I also want this feature and agree with others that it seems like a very basic function, I was actually surprised on finding it isn't already in the (generally excellent) program.

Re: Feature suggestion on github https://github.com/zotero/zotero/issues/1073
I wouldn't want a separate search bar just for searching collections, that seems far too inelegant a solution. I would think it's intuitive if collections come up in the list of results for the normal search.

Thank you for your response!

Well if the program is built up in such a way that it's impossible to make the regular search go through the collections and have collections presented in the middle panel without having to re-work the software from the ground up, then yes I understand why it's a non-trivial issue. Thank you for explaining that.

I think most of us are accustomed to harddrive search functions (eg the search function in Finder in OS X) that return folders as well as files - corresponding to collections and references, respectively, in Zotero. I suppose, now that I consider it, that that's a bit different to Zotero since references don't really have a 'file path' like with most OS's (eg C://Folder/Subfolder/text.txt). Instead it's all in one big heap, my library, while the collections are really more like tags than actual 'folders' in the sense of the word we are familiar with from file managers. You might be going "no shit sherlock" right now. But I'm guessing this might be the reason why I and others found it counterintuitive not to be presented with corresponding collections, in addition to references, when doing a search. Not that this necessarily makes it easier to find a solution everyone would be satisfied with. But I think it might help thinking about when people well-versed in the Zotero environment discuss the issue with those of us not very familiar with the nuts and bolts behind the UI.

Just to expand on that last point, the obvious solution here would be another filter box at the bottom of the collection pane, similar to the one at the bottom of the tags selector. But having three search bars in the UI all the time seems rather excessive, so I don't think we'd do that (particularly since, as I note above, there's already a way to search for collections via the keyboard).

What we'll likely do instead is have a way to show and select a filter bar, probably at the top of the pane.

A toolbar button seems a little unwieldy, since it would be a third magnifying glass in the toolbar, and I suspect most people don't have enough collections for this to be commonly used. (If we got a customizable toolbar at some point in the future, it could be an option.)

What might work is a "Find Collections" option in the Edit menu (and maybe a shortcut key) that showed and focused that bar. The bar would then be dismissed if you pressed Esc, and maybe also if you just clicked away while it was empty. (There can't really be an 'x' to close the bar, because the search box itself will have an 'x' in it when text is entered.)

I would also like to second that for me it's important to quickly locate collections (I have hundreds). I've just switched from Citavi to Zotero (and don't get me wrong, I *love* Zotero). But in citavi I was able to quickly search for collections, and now it's a bit of a mess (e.g., sometimes you don't know the first letter of the collection name, which is why the keyboard search option doesn't really cut it). So it'd be great to find a convenient implementation via search/filter! And thanks for this awesome program!

I'll add a vote for this feature on behalf of our whole group. It would be extremely helpful! I'd even be happy with an inelegant solution that included a 3rd search field. Just having this functionality would be worthwhile even if it's clunky.

Also, regarding the partial solution of expanding collections and typing, it was helpful to learn about that here in this thread (thank you), but it only seems to find collections that begin with the letters you type, and only if you type quickly and smoothly enough. It seems to be an extremely limited solution and does not help if the term you're looking for isn't at the very beginning of the collection or if you have more than one collection with that term included. Is there a way to get it to jump to the next or previous instance?