# Must note titles be unique within a collection?
**URL:** https://discourse.notenik.app/t/must-note-titles-be-unique-within-a-collection/258
**Category:** Questions
**Created:** [July 20, 2023, 9:27pm UTC](https://discourse.notenik.app/t/must-note-titles-be-unique-within-a-collection/258 "2023-07-20T21:27:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Malcolm](https://discourse.notenik.app/u/Malcolm)
#### Post date: [July 20, 2023, 9:27pm UTC](https://discourse.notenik.app/t/must-note-titles-be-unique-within-a-collection/258/1 "2023-07-20T21:27:51Z")
I’ve just bumped into an issue with note titles. I have setup a collection as a project notepad. There are several sections: Behaviour, To Do, Issues. Often I want to have a note in issues and a note in behaviour that have exactly the same title. However,when I try to do this the title is being “unique-named” with a trailing digit.
In my mind that means those notes refer to different things. I want them to have identical names so that I can see that, for example, List View has guidelines in the Behaviour section, and it has Issues.
Behaviour: List View
Issues: List View
I’m suspecting that the use of note titles for file names on disk is responsible for this but I’m crossing my fingers. After all, it’s possible for Collection names to be edited.
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### Author:  [@ErikMH](https://discourse.notenik.app/u/ErikMH)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2023, 1:46pm UTC](https://discourse.notenik.app/t/must-note-titles-be-unique-within-a-collection/258/2 "2023-07-21T13:46:34Z")
Looks like note titles must be unique within a collection:
> Each Note in a Collection must have a unique Title, however Notenik will automatically append a number, or increment one if already present, in order to allow a Note to be added that would otherwise be a duplicate…
>
> The title field for a Note serves as that Note’s unique identifier within its Collection,…
— [Notenik Knowledge Base 11.4.1: Title](https://notenik.app/knowledge-base/EPUB/html/title.html)
* * *
Perhaps, make _behavior_, _to-do_, and _issues_ children notes of a parent note (in this case, the parent would be _List View_)?
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### Author:  [@hbowie](https://discourse.notenik.app/u/hbowie)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2023, 2:47pm UTC](https://discourse.notenik.app/t/must-note-titles-be-unique-within-a-collection/258/3 "2023-07-21T14:47:36Z")
Yes, Note titles must be unique within a Collection, and, yes, this does have something to with file names on disk.
But it’s also an aspect of what I tend to think of as Notenik’s human-centricity. Many systems use some sort of internal ID to uniquely identify each item, and don’t care what you call an item, or whether you have duplicates. But then, how does a human tell them apart? And how does a human make any sense of the info, if they want to “pop the hood” a bit and take a look at their data?
You’re saying you put notes in different sections. I assume you’re using the Seq field to keep them separate? But the Seq field doesn’t work as an identifier for various reasons.
You can always put the section name in the title of the Note, perhaps at the back – or use some sort of appropriate abbreviation.
Those are my initial thoughts, anyway.
Thanks for your post!
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### Author:  [@Malcolm](https://discourse.notenik.app/u/Malcolm)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2023, 11:09pm UTC](https://discourse.notenik.app/t/must-note-titles-be-unique-within-a-collection/258/4 "2023-07-21T23:09:40Z")
Thanks for the suggestion @ErikMH. In my example, List View is only one of many items. I would immediately bump into the same problem from the other direction:
List View: Behaviour
List View: Issues
Form View: Behaviour
Form View: Issues
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### Author:  [@Malcolm](https://discourse.notenik.app/u/Malcolm)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2023, 11:25pm UTC](https://discourse.notenik.app/t/must-note-titles-be-unique-within-a-collection/258/5 "2023-07-21T23:25:21Z")
Yes, I’m using Seq and Level to arrange them.
The message that I’m getting is that I’m trying to apply concepts that don’t fit the situation. I want outliner behaviour but Notenik is not an outliner.
This maybe a good use for tags. I’m thinking that “Behaviour”, “Issues”, etc could become tags. I could then use the tags view to see all my issues in one spot, and when they are not longer an issue I can strip the tag from the note. I’ll experiment with that.
\< 😛 \> just remembering that I can define my own fields too.
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### Author:  [@ThePrinter](https://discourse.notenik.app/u/ThePrinter)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2023, 2:00am UTC](https://discourse.notenik.app/t/must-note-titles-be-unique-within-a-collection/258/6 "2023-07-22T02:00:51Z")
You can also try assigning each section a [Class](https://notenik.app/knowledge-base/EPUB/html/class.html) and sorting your collection by Class + Title from the collection menu. I like your tags idea a lot (because I really like how tags work in the app especially when you nest them) but I figure that your usecase may additionally benefit from the Class field if you haven’t alread considered using it.