Removing items from a collection automatically removes them from all subcollections

edited December 4, 2022
Hello,

I use Zotero v.6.0.18 and recently I noticed a dramatic change that has not been communicated. Let me preface this by saying that I use recursiveCollections to have items from subcollections show up on parent collections.

In the past, if I wanted to move items from a parent collection to a subcollection, I would move them to a subcollection and then remove them from the collection. Because recursiveCollections was set to true, the items would still show up on the parent collection, despite being removed.

If I do the same thing now, the items get removed BOTH from the parent collection AND from the subcollection, thus driving me mad.

Could you please clarify?
  • I have just now noticed that when I right click and choose "remove from collection" the popup window says "remove from collection AND ALL SUBCOLLECTIONS", which it didn't use to say in the past.
  • OK, so with this configuration, it is impossible to determine if an item belongs to both the parent collection and the subcollection. I have to move the subcollection to a different parent collection and see if the item exists in the previous parent collection.

    How do I revert back to the old settings? This makes zero sense.
  • Turn recursive collections off (temporarily if need be) under View--> Show Items from Subcollections.

    The behavior of remove with recursive collections set was incredibly confusing to everyone else (you literally couldn't predict where an item was going to be deleted from), and hence the change. I don't think there's much of a chance of it coming back or of a pref for the old version.
  • I don't agree. "Delete from collection" suggests that the item is deleted from the collection.

    Regardless, if I turn off recursive collections temporarily, that helps me determine if the item is in the parent collection or not. But how do I remove items from the parent collection without removing them from their subcollections? Is there a way to do this now?
  • The function changes behavior depending on the view. If you view the content of all collections (i.e. recursive set to true) it deletes items from this and all subcollections. If you turn recursive collections off, it only removes from the currently selected collection.

    To see why this is necessary, take e.g. a scenario when the parent collection is entirely empty. The result is that you 'remove' an item and nothing changes.
  • OK, I verified that this works but this is completely un-intuitive now.

    There is nothing to indicate that function changes depending on the view, except mentioning "...and from subcollections" but people will click ENTER way too quickly and miss that. A better way would be to have a tick mark or something in the confirmation panel.

    The option when you right click is still named "Delete from Collection". I think the way this is coded now will cause lots of issues to people who have gotten used to the previous configuration.
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