Merged items in Trash

ssmithtr · August 11, 2021

I just noticed that Merge Items puts the duplicate pieces into the Trash. Is there any way to distinguish these auto-dumped items from items that a user moved there directly (eg: through Remove Item from Collection or Move Item to trash)?

If not, it would be a nice feature to somehow tag/mark either type of item in the Trash. (For instance, if the merged items were greyed out or user-deleted items were bold.) This would be especially useful for people who share Libraries where another user might delete something you wanted and someone might clean up duplicates without also clearing the Trash. Just a thought.

dstillman · August 12, 2021

This isn't going to happen, sorry. They're not really "auto-dumped". If there weren't a merge feature, you'd just delete one of the two duplicates — it's really just the same thing.

In general, you're not really meant to be regularly restoring things from the trash, and if that's a regular part of your workflow, I'd recommend adjusting your workflow. The trash is a last resort to recover from mistakes.

djross3 · August 12, 2021

In general, you're not really meant to be regularly restoring things from the trash, and if that's a regular part of your workflow, I'd recommend adjusting your workflow. The trash is a last resort to recover from mistakes.

I assume most users don't intentionally put things in the trash unless they want to delete them, but I do look over the items in the trash to double check that I want to delete them before I empty the trash. That's just common sense, so being able to identify items in the trash is useful. Personally my solution to the OP's question is to routinely empty the trash whenever I delete or merge something, so I won't wonder later why something is sitting in the trash. But having an indication that an item is in the trash due to a merge could be nice.

ssmithtr · August 12, 2021

Thanks for the replies. I understand it was a long-shot request, so not a biggie. As for workflow, it's really mostly for group libraries where other users may make mistakes. It could be that they're less careful, delete something unimportant to them that you think still has value, or they just don't manage the Trash properly. It's more of a failsafe for out-of-process behavior from a group than intended to be part of a normal, desirable, process. I agree that it would not be necessary at all for My Library or a group library that had totally reliable users.