assigning item to multiple collections

I am bringing into Zotero approximately 3,000 pdf documents. Each item likely will be assigned to 3-5 collections and/or subcollections. To speed up assigning them to various collections and/or subcollections, there are a few things that would make this less painful.

1. Rather than dragging an item to each relevant collection or subcollection, it would be much easier if I could select the item and then just click each collection or subcollection to which it should be assigned.

2. When expanded, the collections and subcollections are more than one screen high. Rather than scroll up and down to find the right collection or subcollection, could the expanded list of collections and subcollections expand to another column in the left pane so that the entire expaned list of collections and subcollections is shown?

Are any of these available? Any other ideas, tricks or tips to speed up the assignment of items? Thanks.
  • Neither of these are possible, but I would recommend against a system with hundreds of collections and suggest that tags would likely be a more usable organizational tool.
  • @bobh: You could also use temporary colored tags for this. Create a colored tag for each collection you want to create and go through the items using the number keys to assign the tags. When you're done, filter by each tag and drag the items to the equivalent collection, and then delete the tags. (If you're using syncing, you may want to temporarily disable auto-sync in the Sync pane of the preferences to avoid a lot of extra uploading and then turn it back on after.)
  • I'll look at the idea of using tags as a transitional organizational means to get items into collections. I concluded tags were not workable for long term organization since they cannot be put into a hierarchy. Thanks.
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