Show if in collection

cynthia
When in My Library view, there is no way to see if an item already belongs to any collection or not.

It would be handy to either be able to set the default collection (I could use InBox or so) so we know where to look for notes that still need to be processed, or to be able to have a column with an asterisks or whatever to denote an item has been added to one of the collections.
  • Andrew Moylan
    I'll second that it would be very useful to be able to quickly tell whether an item is present in any collections.
  • amc
    edited February 4, 2007
    You can use a "Saved Search" to search by collection. I set one up that I call "References only in My Library" that consists of a series of "Collection is not" statements. Anything that the search turns up is only in My Library and nowhere else. It's maybe not a perfect solution because in addition to references you get links, abstracts, attachments, notes, and the like, but it works.
  • Matthias
    I like how this problem is solved in the Mac OS X address book: with an entry selected, holding down the option (alt) modifier key higlights all collections which contain that particular ressource. This even works when having multiple entries selected, in which case only those collections are highlighted that share all of the selected entries.

    A similar concept might also work for Zotero.
  • dstillman
    I never saw that feature in the OS X address book before—it's great. I think we could do something like that. I'll create a ticket. Thanks.
  • dstillman
    OK, I implemented highlighting of collections containing selected items on the development branch. It'll appear in the next release.

    Uses Option/Alt for Mac/Linux, Control for Windows (because Alt alone selects the menu bar on Windows). Triggers after a brief (1/4-sec) delay to avoid presses that are part of keyboard shortcuts.

    Thanks for the suggestions.
  • cynthia
    Thanks... Impressed with how this development goes. Zotero has become my research tool. I use Scrapbook only for quick-grabs that need no official context.

    Thanks again!
  • d4101rth
    edited October 29, 2007
    Hi Dan

    Regarding
    "I implemented highlighting of collections containing selected items on the development branch. It'll appear in the next release."

    Sorry if I'm being a bit thick, but I'm running Zotero Version 1.0.0rc5 under Windows and I've tried all combinations of Ctl and Ctl-Alt etc with an item selected or while clicking on an item in My Library and I can't get the associated collection to be highlighted.

    Can you give more detail on how this functionality is used, preferably with an example. Or have I not got the correct Zotero version ?

    Regarding long term implementation of this feature, my thoughts are could it be a menu item on the right click menu.

    Then from either the My Library listing or in search results, simply right click on the item and select something like "Show my Collection". With a simple message returned if it doesn't belong to a collection.

    BTW: Zotero is an absolutely fantastic tool please keep up the good work.

    Cheers

    Ray
  • nonsequitoria
    This is an important feature, since many of us save items to "My Library" first, then sort into collections and sub-collections later. Right now, it's very difficult to see what I've sorted and what still needs to be sorted in "My Library". I could set up a saved search as suggested above, but I already have 10 collections and sub-collections, and this will likely continue to grow. The CTRL yellow highlight trick is handy, but only lets me view the collections for a single item at a time or the union of several items.

    For future functionality, a simple improvement would be to add a column along with Title, Creator, Year, etc to represent the number of collections the current item is in. That way, I could sort by this in My Library and quickly put those items into sub-collections, or easily create a saved search to grab all items with 0 collections.

    Thanks for a great tool, this is exactly what I was looking for!
  • Xtraeme
    edited January 5, 2008
    My collections are deeply nested. It would be nice if the CTRL+{select item in library} trick would expand out all parent collections so the highlighted collection is visible.

    A better long term solution would be a popup list with all collections an item belongs to with a button to go to whichever Collection the person is interested in inside the Collection pane.

    Other than that - nice work guys - viva la Scrapbook!
  • wlamia
    The Ctrl key features is not working consistently for me. I search for something, select an item, and hold the Ctrl key but it no longer shows what collections contain the item.

    Zotero 1.0.4 - Firefox 2.0.0.14 - WinXP SP3
  • CH 53
    I am enthusiastic about the feature to have collections highlighted containing the selected item - but I was disappointed to realize that it does not work with saved searches - or did I miss something there?
  • Gracile
    You're right: it does not highlight the saved searches an item belongs to.
  • CH 53
    Is there any hope this will be changed - I'd really appreciate that, as the saved searches feature is absolutely gorgeous!
  • adamsmith
    I doubt it - saved searches get built live, so including them would mean the feature works with a significant delay.
  • mronkko2
    You would not necessarily need to build the entire saved search, you could just compare the selected item to all search predicates. But I do not see this happening any time soon unless someone submits a patch for this.
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