Show items not belonging to any subcollection

shivams
Let's say I have many items in a collection. This collection also has many subcollections. Now, I want to know/see which items in this collection do not belong to any subcollection. How to do that?
  • adamsmith
    edited April 21, 2015
    Short of a complex advanced search, I don't think you can
  • shivams
    @adamsmith: Advanced search will be very cumbersome. Why I need this is because in my collection I often keep on adding various items which I later organize into sub-collections. I need to see which items I haven't organized yet.

    Can their be a hack to achieve this or could I make a feature request for this?
  • aurimas
    What would solve this problem and what I've been interested in implementing for a while is a toggle button (probably in the Zotero toolbar) for recursive/non-recursive collections*. Unless, you mean that you have items assigned to both the parent collection and the subcollections (and you do not have recursive collections turned on). In that case, mostly what adamsmith says above. Also, you can hit Ctrl/Cmd while going through each item in the parent collection to see if they are also in a subcollection.

    * a recursive collection means that by viewing the parent collection you also see items that are within the subcollection.
  • bes0030
    I completely agree with shivams - I'd be very grateful for such functionality.
  • SZ99
    Hi Shivams, did you ever find a solution for your workflow? I'm new to Zetero and just thought of the same issue. The CTRL/CMD feature that Aurimas mentioned is helpful, but not useful for what we're looking for. Any solutions?
  • glhrmv
    Just to clarify, it's the Alt key on the macOS version of Zotero Desktop.
  • cascadia
    edited November 8, 2022
    I would also love this functionality. I use my collection as a landing place for a general topic I'm researching. Every so often I go through the collection and sort newly added items into finer-tuned subcollections. It would be so ever helpful to have a feature where I could see which newly items in a collection don't yet belong to a subcollection.
  • AbeJellinek
    Does View -> Show Items from Subcollections meet your needs? If you go to the parent collection and uncheck that, you'll only see items that are in the parent collection itself.

    Items can be in the parent collection *and* child collections simultaneously, though, so make sure that you move items to the child collection instead of just adding them. (Hold Command while dragging on macOS, or Shift [I believe] on other platforms).
  • jproffernano
    Did anyone figure this out?
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