Submitted by jimspoon on 2024/03/28 19:51

I have a very long list of a few hundred items that I'd like to arrange in outline form.  I'd like to select items as I go through the list, and then move them to a parent item.  The items I'd like to select are non-contiguous.  The Marked Items would be good for this, except that when I use the Add As Sub-Items menu option, the destination item becomes an additional parent to the marked items.  If the marked items already were child items of another item, they remain so; that parent item remains a parent item.  But in this case I'd like to "move" the marked items, so that they become children of the new destination parent, and cease to be children of the "source" parent.  Now I do see that I after I add all the marked items as subitems of a destination parent, I can highlight the just added subitems (multiple items), and then in the Properties Pane, under Item Properties > Parents, I can right-click the desired destination parent, and then click Delete All Other Parent Links.  That did work to remove the original parent from multiple items.  I guess this is the way I have to do it?  But if we had a Move as Sub-Item command (instead of Add as Subitem) , that additional step would be eliminated.

Also - checkboxes would be a handy tool to mark items in this way.  Do we have anything like that?  In this case of going through a long list and marking items along the way, the Add to Marked Items command is the one I need to use.  I've configured a keyboard shortcut to Add to Marked Items for this purpose.  Checkboxes might be an easier option.  It can be hard to find an available keyboard shortcut (for example, the Ctrl+Shift+M for Mark Items isn't working for some reason, must be a conflict somewhere).  Also it would be easy to make a mistake and select Mark Items instead of Add to Marked Items, and Mark Items would wipe out the already existing markings.  

 

Comments

Hi Jim,

There is one way to do this quite effectively:

  1. Identify the items to move. There are a number of ways to do this, Add to Marked is one way, you can also use a Y/N field
  2. Show these items in a grid (set the source to [ItemsMarked] or to the Y/N field used)
  3. Set the display to flat list and context parent to 1 level
  4. Items to move will be either a TLI or a sub-item
  5. Select a sub-item, any one
  6. Item > Select item > Select Level
  7. In a different grid, ideally shown in a separate tab group, show the destination parent
  8. Drag the selected sub-items to be under the destination parent
  9. Refresh the first grid, only items now shown will be those that are TLI
  10. Drag these to be under the destination parent

HTH!

 

Thank you Pierre, that's very helpful.  For this purpose I just right-clicked the Item column header > Add Columns > Add New > Yes/No column > entered name "temp-yn".  I checked the "temp-yn" checkbox for the desired items.  Then Grid > New Grid > New Grid Name > entered "temp-yn".  The temp-yn grid opens up showing the items I checked.  I selected those items, and then dragged them to the tab for the grid containing the destination parent.   When I hovered the pointer over that grid tab, the grid appeared as a drop target.  Then I continued dragging the items to the destination parent.  I made sure that I hovered over the right portion of the Item field of the destination parent so that the "drop as subitems" arrow was showing, and then I dropped the items.

Now if I did not have context parents showing in the "temp-yn" grid, when I dropped them on the destination parent as subitems, these items continued to be children of their original parent.  So that works the same as the "Add as Subitems".  But if I do have the original parent showing as a context parent in the "temp-yn" field, and then drop the subitems on the destination parent, the subitems will no longer be children of that source parent.  I guess when the context parent is showing, and only the subitems are dragged and dropped, IQ treats that as indicating that I want to sever those parent-child links.  But if the context parent is not showing, IQ does not have this indication and maintains the existing parent-child links.  Do I have that right?

How do I ?