Not sure I understand the vault/folders relationship. Please, help!

Please, let me understand the vault/folders relationship in Obsidian!

Here is what I have now:

  1. I set up a fresh Obsidian vault
  2. I have some general notes in the root of the vault. Everything seems OK so far.
  3. Now I want to add a collection of my book quotes. Each of these notes should be named by the name of the book author. As there are many of them, I decide to create subfolder for them, named Reading.
  4. I manually created a main note in the Reading folder to be used as a Table of contents.
  5. Now I create a first entry in my Table of contents: I type [[Mark Twain]] and press Alt+Enter to create the new file. But file is created in the root of the valult, and not in the Reading folder, where Table of contents resides.

So, here is the question: how can I create the files in Reading folder without constantly switching the vaults or creating links like this: [[./Reading/Mark Twain]]… I was sure, there is some concept of working directory and the files will be created in the same folder where it’s parent resides.

Please, help!
Thank you!

Currently one option is when making a new note to right click on the folder and select new note option. That will create the note in the folder.

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One hack i found so far is that you can drag and drop your newly created notes in your reading folder. The back links path will update automatically so you don’t have to worry about any broken links.

In v0.4.1, there was an option to select either the root or the same folder when creating a new page, from a link. I selected root and I haven’t seen that option again (I’m using the current version v0.6.0). Either, it was a permanent one-time setting or it was removed (or it’s there still and I don’t know how to reset it).

Perhaps a feature request to allow a setting to reset that option preference would be useful?.

Here is a feature request about that: Option to create a new note in the current directory

@AlanLee, thanks for pointing me to the FR!

I’m pretty sure there should be a simple rule: notes, created by [[internal links]] should be created in the same folder, where the referencing (parent) note resides, until user explicitly specify other location ([[…/internal link]], or [[./subfolder/internal ling]]).

Looks like a bug to me.

Here is ongoing discussion on the topic. Join, please!