Removing individual files/folders from collection

Help & Support
1

Hello, did a quick search on the forum and found this thread, which seems to indicate that DOpus already supports this.

If so, it would be great to have an easier way to do this with a simple right-click ("Remove from Collection") on a file/folder that's included in a Collection. I've been using File Collections successfully as a backup method (although with some care, since they aren't meant for this) and this feature would make for a great enhancement.

2

By default there should be a "Remove From Collection" context menu item already. If it's been deleted somehow you can add it back through Settings -> File Types -> Collection Item (the command is Delete REMOVECOLLECTION).

3

Thanks. Yes, "Remove From Collection" context item is available but only for the "master-root" file/folder ("coll://Collection name"). For any subfolders and files beyond that initial folder, there is no context menu entry. These folders/files are no longer listed/displayed inside "coll:..." but on their regular disk location. However, they are still part of a Collection and I think it'd make sense to have the Remove option here, too. I guess a "Reset Collection" command or similar would also be needed, to re-enable all removed Collection subfolders/files.

In short, the context entry seems to only support multiple files/folders inside the root collection folder, but not within subfolders.

4

I think you're confused about folders in collections.

A folder can be added to a collection in two very different ways:

  • Adding what is effectively a shortcut to the folder to the collection. (If you double-click it, you'll go to the actual folder. The things in the folder are not in the collection.)

Or:

  • Creating a sub-collection, into which the folder's contents are added as collection members. (This usually also means that folders below the folder are turned into sub-sub-collections, and so on.)

Which happens depends on exactly how the collection was created, and in some cases you're given an explicit choice.

It sounds like you're dealing with the first case, which means there is no Remove From Collection menu item on the things inside the folder, because those things are not actually in the collection; only the folder is.

Put another way, collections are just a list of things, optionally including nested lists. When a folder is added to a collection, it doesn't mean everything in the folder is added. You would not want that, either: If you search for things with "Name = Program Files" then you'd want the the Program Files folder to be included in the results, but you would not want, say, dopus.exe (which exists below Program Files) in the results as its name is dopus.exe, not Program Files.

5

Many thanks for the detailed info leo, indeed you are right. The setting "When copying folders to a Collection" was on "add to collection as a member" so I've totally forgotten about Sub-Collections which from a quick test, seem to work exactly as I want (everything inside can be selectively removed). :blush: