Upgrade StorageImporting a collection results in subcollection contents ending up in collection root
Dear Zotero people,
Firstly, nice app and I've managed to get a few other people to use it. Sorry for the length of this, I just wanted to get everything down.
I'm in the process of sorting out a decent sized collection of pdf books, notes, papers, patents, etc etc and managed to get myself in a bit of a tangle between my desktop machine and laptop. I've bit the bullet and decided to have the desktop as the authoritative and get sync working for Lappy but I need everything tidied up first.
This is where the problem is. I have the data on Lappy broken down into multiple collections and subcollections. I now want to move the collections, and their subcollections, one at a time over to the desktop. I select one of the collections and export it, right click on collection and "Export Collection...". I provide a path and an export name and off it goes to a memory stick.
The memory stick is then taken to the desktop and I do File -> Import Collection, navigate to the memory stick and select the previously exported collection. Zotero thinks for a bit, and imports the collection.
I now go to the newly imported collection and to my dismay see that all of the entries that were in subcollections are now also in the root of the collection. They still exist in their respective subcollections but are now also in the root.
As you can imagine, this now needs a fair bit of post-processing, deleting all the dupes. I can't just select everything in the root and hit "remove from Collection" as there are entries that should be in the root.
This is very easy to replicate. Just select a collection with subcollections, export into a temp dir giving it a new name then reimport into Zotero.
I don't know if I've missed something in my understanding of the import/export process or if this is a bug/feature. Any thoughts greatly appreciated.
Andrew
Firstly, nice app and I've managed to get a few other people to use it. Sorry for the length of this, I just wanted to get everything down.
I'm in the process of sorting out a decent sized collection of pdf books, notes, papers, patents, etc etc and managed to get myself in a bit of a tangle between my desktop machine and laptop. I've bit the bullet and decided to have the desktop as the authoritative and get sync working for Lappy but I need everything tidied up first.
This is where the problem is. I have the data on Lappy broken down into multiple collections and subcollections. I now want to move the collections, and their subcollections, one at a time over to the desktop. I select one of the collections and export it, right click on collection and "Export Collection...". I provide a path and an export name and off it goes to a memory stick.
The memory stick is then taken to the desktop and I do File -> Import Collection, navigate to the memory stick and select the previously exported collection. Zotero thinks for a bit, and imports the collection.
I now go to the newly imported collection and to my dismay see that all of the entries that were in subcollections are now also in the root of the collection. They still exist in their respective subcollections but are now also in the root.
As you can imagine, this now needs a fair bit of post-processing, deleting all the dupes. I can't just select everything in the root and hit "remove from Collection" as there are entries that should be in the root.
This is very easy to replicate. Just select a collection with subcollections, export into a temp dir giving it a new name then reimport into Zotero.
I don't know if I've missed something in my understanding of the import/export process or if this is a bug/feature. Any thoughts greatly appreciated.
Andrew
Select Collection to export
Right click on it in the LHS panel
Select "Export Collection..."
Dialogue pops up:
Zotero RDF
Export Notes
Export Files
selected
Hit OK
File requester dialogue pops up. Name of exported data -> "trout". Drop into temp dir
In the same instance of Zotero select File -> Import...
I want to import from "A file (BibTeX........etc.)"
Hit Next, a File Import dialogue pops up.
Navigate to the trout dir, enter the dir and select trout.rdf. Hit Open
Options dialogue
Default ticked "Place imported..."
File Handling is "Copy files...."
Next
Import dialogue pops up with "Importing" and a progress bar. Eventually the import completes with an item count which looks about right.
Hit finish to dismiss the dialogue.
Now within Zotero navigate to the trout collection.
Items that were in the subcollections of the Source collection are now, within trout, both in their correct subcollection but ALSO in the root of trout.
Forgot to mention this before, 9.0.6, 64 bit, up to date Gentoo Linux. Whilst getting the version, I noticed the "Report Errors..." option. Following is the data:
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1786457867889 addons.xpi WARN Force scan SCOPE_APPLICATION (app-builtin-addons location missing from XPIStates)
[JavaScript Error: "NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE: Component returned failure code: 0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE) [nsICommandLine.handleFlagWithParam]" {file: "resource:///modules/BrowserContentHandler.sys.mjs" line: 479}]
bch_handle@resource:///modules/BrowserContentHandler.sys.mjs:479:34
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "Zotero.Attachments.cleanAttachmentURI() is deprecated -- use Zotero.Utilities.cleanURL"]
[JavaScript Error: "TypeError: can't access property "_sizeToPreferredSize", this is undefined" {file: "chrome://global/content/elements/dialog.js" line: 248}]
moveToAlertPosition@chrome://global/content/elements/dialog.js:248:9
onload@chrome://zotero/content/about.xhtml:1:1
appName => Zotero, version => 9.0.6 (x64), os => Linux 7.1.7-gentoo-dist-bin #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Aug 6 19:08:02 -00 2026, locale => en-US, extensions => ZotMeta (2.0, extension)