Is it possible to search for Collections?

pehendrix
It looks as though Advanced Search only returns articles, not folers... is there a way to search for the name of a Collection? Also, curious if tagging Collections is on zotero's roadmap. As I create more Collections and Subcollections, they're becoming unwieldy and findability is critical. Would welcome tips on how others are managing, efficiently.
  • dstillman
    A proper collection search may happen at some point, but you can click within the collections pane, press + on the keyboard to expand all collections, and just start typing the collection name to focus it.

    Collection tagging is not planned.
  • bentle
    I would find a collection search to be very helpful. Having used Zotero for years, I now have a large number of collections which can make finding a set of papers saved together difficult to find at times.
  • astroHao
    It may not be directly helpful to your problem, but my two cents are that you should use the tag system maybe. Organizing items in a tree-structure collection is basically not much different from organizing them outside of Zotero. Just try the nonlinear tag system.
  • jtax
    The tag system works well, but not for "projects" you're working on. I use collections like playlists in iTunes where I may have 1 journal article in more than 1 collection and/or subcollection because it pertains to multiple projects. I too, would definitely love to see a collection search implemented, similar to how bookmarks can be searched for in a browser's bookmark system (Brave, Chrome, Firefox, etc.)
  • alflamingo
    Extra vote for being able to search collection in a way or the other.

    My usecase include being able to find a collection from file explorer and/or launcher on windows. Now from Powertoy search (alt+space) I could find a pdf file in zotero from its name, but sometimes I'd like to find a collection.

    For some time, I thought to copy all collection tittle and the corresponding links through Zutilo, and put it in a document or in a folder with symlinks. But you can't select more than one collection at once and you can't copy paste the tittle, so it is a repetitive task and a process hard to maintain as you create and change collection name.

    Maybe with csv export from all of your library but that would include a lot of unnecessary element...
  • bovender
    Great tip to press + and start typing.

    Would be even better to have an input field to filter collections, just like with the tag cloud right below it :-)

    (BTW I think the fact that people are asking for this feature is a testimony to how long folks have been using Zotero for their research! Great stuff!)
  • fschuman
    I'd also find a collection search highly useful.

    One use case would especially be incremental consolidation and organisation of a folder system. So that one could easily answer if a (similar) folder exists already within another collection. Before making a new one, to avoid duplicates. Or for merging duplicates in a review phase..
  • jacob_peacock
    +1 for this feature request
  • jtax
    edited July 8, 2023
    A little over a year since my post above, I recently, and by accident, discovered that on the iOS app, it is possible to search for collections! I was trying to search for an article by typing a tag but was pleasantly surprised the app searched for collections instead. Once you click into a collection, you can search by tag, title, author and so on. If the desktop application can incorporate this "Search Collections" feature from the iOS app, that would be great. My current workflow now is to use the desktop app concurrently with the iOS app, only to use the iOS feature that is not yet available on the desktop app.

    Edit: This "collection search" on the iOS app will only show 1 hit, so it's not as useful as initially thought.
  • dstillman
    This "collection search" on the iOS app will only show 1 hit, so it's not as useful as initially thought.
    That's not the case for me. If you're seeing that, please start a new thread.
  • gustav.kalm
    +1 for adding the ability to search for collections. Like jtax, I really like this feature on the iOS app. Have been hoping/waiting for this feature for years as my library only keeps growing.
  • haug
    being able to search collections would be really great.

    If a genuine search for collection is not a priority, perhaps it would be possible to modify the advanced search function so that it is possible to search for items whose collection contains certain words? Currently, when I try to use "Collection" as search criterion, the only available options are "is" and "is not" and then I get a looooong dropdown list with all collection names.

    If contains could be added here, that would help immensely. (it's still a workaround since you'd be searching for items in collections in order to find the collections, but better than nothing...
  • PChemist
    Being able to match the collection "path" at least in the Advanced Search is essential. Otherwise, I have to manage the full tree structure separately as tags, which is a bad.
  • FriedrichNeu
    Yes, being able to search for (sub)collections would be a great thing. Hopefully one day it will be possible :)
  • Warlach
    Just commenting to add my voice for this feature. My Collection hierarchy gets more complicated every day in terms of number of items and sub-Collections etc and so being able to search for Collections by name would *really* be a game changer.
  • buildcountry
    +1 for searching and tagging (sub)collections request
  • ThanhDang216
    +1 for collections and sub-collection search.

    Please update this function as soon as possible. Thank you.
  • dstillman
    It's now possible to search for collections in the Zotero 7 beta.
  • alflamingo
    Amazing!
  • fschuman
    Awesome.

    A UI feature suggestion: add a 'search collections' option to the right-click context menus for collections and libraries. That's the place were I naturally would be / have been looking for it, especially when browsing collections to sort items.
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