Archive only child/sub notes and not top note.

[MartinBelko]

I have a question regarding archival labels, i want to archive only child/sub notes to avoid those being searchable but still have the top note searchable. As far as i understand:

• #archived(inheritable)=true includes the top note as well.
• #child:archived=true does the job, but the archived label is persistent.

For my specific use case, i have a board note with every purchase/item i want, so it ends up being a messy note with a bunch of sub notes that may have little to no contents and "clogs" the search.

Started using Trilium about a couple of months ago, fantastic app, i love it.

[dosubot[bot]]

Hi @MartinBelko! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the Trilium team.

You're correct: #archived(inheritable)=true archives both the parent and all children, making everything unsearchable by default, while #child:archived=true applies the archived label only to new child notes, so the parent stays searchable but the archived label on children is persistent—even if you move them elsewhere [wiki: Attribute inheritance].

There isn't a built-in way to archive only child notes without the archived label sticking to each child. However, this approach is currently the best way to keep your board note searchable while hiding sub-notes from search and the tree. You can also use the "Hide archived notes" option in Tree settings to visually declutter your workspace [wiki: Archived notes].

If you want to hide children without using the archived label, there's a community plugin that lets you add #child:hidden to a parent note to hide all its children from the tree (but this doesn't affect search) [discussion & plugin mention].

For managing clutter in search, you might also consider using saved searches to filter out archived or hidden notes as needed [saved search example].

Let me know if you want more details on any of these workflows!

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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