Expandable file collection labels in Folder Tree

I'm doing a short evaluation of Dopus prior to a final purchase decision. The essential feature for me are file collections ... it's a long story, but I can't find any other tool that does this. Standard "tagging solutions" don't meet my needs.

Just now, my test threw up some odd behaviour that I didn't expect. Here's the story:

  1. I make a new collection
  2. I drag multiple folders into that collection from various storage locations. Now I have 10 folders in the collection each containing multiple source files. The goal is to consolidate the information in the collected files,
  3. The folders have been added as "members". That turns out to be the problem.
  4. I notice that the new collection is not expandable in the Folder Tree pane. That seems odd, partly because it is obviously useful and partly because the MonroeWorld video on Collections shows expandable collection labels.
  5. So I made a second new collection and in it made an empty sub-collection. Yup, that new collection is expandable.

That's just irritating. It's not a show-stopper. But it would be a lot easier to be able to expand the list of member folders in the Folder Tree, chose one that I want to put into Lister 1 and another to put into Lister 2. Since everything else in the folder tree is expandable at the folder level, I don't know why that would not be true of Collections.

Of course, I am a Dopus beginner. Maybe there is some configuration setting I am missing.
If so, I'd love to know what I should reconfigure.

If not, it would be a really nice little improvement!

Thanks for any advice!

Creating a folder that contains softlinks to the other folders below it should give what you want, if I've understood correctly.

More detail on creating them with Opus here: Making Links and Junctions [Directory Opus Manual]

(They also work in other programs, unlike Collections, since they're part of the filesystem.)

Thinking about this again, Libraries are another option that probably fits what you’re doing better than Collections.