Bug: Copying of subcollections not working as expected

srippon · August 10, 2016

Running windows 10 with Zotero 4.0.29.10 standalone (on both a laptop and a desktop PC). Within my library, I am able to drag and drop any subcollection to move it, as expected. Holding down ctrl while I do so makes the + symbol appear next to the pointer. But so long as the subcollection is dropped anywhere within my library (and not in a group library), the subcollection is still moved, not duplicated elsewehere, as expected.

Is there a workaround?

dstillman · August 11, 2016

Copying collections isn't supported, sorry. (With our current framework, we can't accurately control the cursor feedback in all cases on all platforms, though this will hopefully improve in the future.) You can of course create a new collection and just drag all items from one to the other to add them to the second collection.

srippon · August 11, 2016

Oh, I was misled by the manual on github, which indicates that copying collections is supported:
https://zotero-manual.github.io/zotero-manual/collections#moving-and-copying-collections
Can you treat this as a feature request? I find it useful to make subcollections for the weekly readings in courses. As courses change a bit from one year to the next, it would be nice be able to simply make a copy of the whole course (collection and subcollections) then edit it.

dstillman · August 11, 2016

Makes sense. Issue created.

srippon · August 11, 2016

Thanks!

adamsmith · August 11, 2016

(sorry about this, we'll fix that in the manual)

Rintze · August 11, 2016

Looks like I'm the culprit for that one (https://github.com/zotero-manual/zotero-manual/commit/a0a5c41d61129b661bcd1453c18923219fd1c051). (maybe I was misled by the fact that the cursor changes when holding ctrl while dragging a collection?)