Expand Notebooks Tree to current note

I have been using Joplin for over a year now. I love it, and it is my “daily driver” for organizing my knowledge.

I have a lot of notes and quite a complex tree like structure with for Notebooks, subNotebooks, Notes, etc…

One thing that I am missing is the ability to expand the Side Bar(Notebooks Tree) to the currently selected note.

Use Case:

Could we add a behaviour simillar to Autoscroll to Source , to expand the Notebooks tree to the current note?

  • it could be when double clicking the note,
  • or an option in the note’s context menu (when I right click the note, select in Project Tree)

Thanks,

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Yes, this worked before. This is a regression and I meant to open a ticket for it.

The notebook is supposed to expand for the selected note (only the necessary tree though) in the following circumstances:

  • global search -> click on a search result in the note list
  • click on In: notebook icon
  • click on an internal link (reference to another note)

Hi @tessus ,

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Does this mean that you will open a regresion bug for this particular case?

What version? I thought I had fixed this recently.

Ok, I did a bit more testing.

It apparently still works for the In: notebook button. Thus the first 2 items in my list above are not a regression, because you just have to click on the In: notebook button when you select a note from the search result (or when you in the All notes view).

The only thing that does not work correctly is when clicking on an internal link (a reference to another note). In fact it actually expands the tree, even if it is not necessary. Let’s say you have a folder A with a few sub folders, and in folder A is the note you want to jump to via an internal link. Folder A is expanded, even though the note is directly in folder A and not a sub folder. So this is a bug, I guess.

So now I am wondering why you would still need a button. In every possible way, the selected folder/note is shown.

Which version are you using? I just tested your use case:

As you can see I click on the link in the preview vzcvzxz and the folder expands on the left, the folder is selected (blue backgound) and the note is selected (grey background) in the note list.

Yes, I believe I used an older branch for the first test.

my current version is: Joplin 1.0.200 (prod, darwin)

So most likely this works in the latest version, I will try to upgrade to the latest.

The app will remember what notebooks you had open, and will re-open them if you open the parent. Isn't it what's happening?

I’m not sure. If I export 2 notebooks, will the internal link still work? I thought the importer will assign new ids to the notes. Come to think of it, that would be weird, because in that case export to JEX is not really a backup and import would destroy all internal links.

But here’s a way to replicate the issue (btw, I noticed the same thing happening when clicking on the In: notebook button).

  • create folder A
  • create folder B
    • create sub-folder B1
    • create sub-folder B2
  • create a note note 2 in B, copy markdown link for that note
  • create a note note 1 in A, paste link into note note 1
  • collapse folder B
  • click on the link in note 1

et voilà - folder B is expanded. There’s no need for that. But anyway, I think I can live with it. It’s just weird, because it makes no sense to me.

It would be ok, if the note was in B1 though.

Guys,

I have updated to latest version - Joplin 1.0.216 (prod, darwin)

And I confirm that when click on a note link(a reference to another note) it expands the tree to the current note(the one you just clicked on).

However, I discovered a new UseCase.

  • If I colapse the tree, and click on the Back Navigation button, it doesn’t expand the tree to the note I am currently on…

So it seems that If you use the navigation buttons, you could lose the context where are you in the tree.

So I still think think that some kind of functionality to force the tree to expand to current note would be useful.