Hello,
Just recently purchased DevonThink and am in the process of getting familiar with it. I’m using it mainly to store pdf documents at the moment and seem to be unable to add custom index fields (e.g. author). There just seems to be a preset list of columns, which I can hide or show but no way of adding any. Is there some workaround - is the alternative to create author groups?
I am hesitant to do this as some some authors span the groups I currently have. Is there a quick way of adding that information (sacrifice the notes field?)? Thanks
As you noted, one of the means of associating a PDF with a characteristic, such as ‘author’ would be to create a group for items with that characteristic and replicate documents into it. That approach allows both organization of a document by topic, and by another characteristic.
I often use another approach involving hyperlinks. For example, I can create a rich text document and give it an appropriate name, such as the name of an author. Then I can simply Option-Command-drag documents by that author into the text area of the rich text document, which will create a list of clickable hyperlinks to the author’s publications. Perhaps I’ve done a search using the name of an author, or created a smart group based on that search. I can simply Option-Command-drag relevant items into my rich text document.
I like the free-form environment of that rich text note. I can interpolate my own notes and comments into that list of links. I can Command-click on a link to open it in another tab of my note window, or use the contextual menu command, ‘Open Link’. I can move content around in any order I wish, or even use a List structure on part or all of the note. If I’m working on a project, I can add additional hyperlinks to related notes or drafts, for example. And within this environment I’ve got a set of tools to help me explore content and ideas, such as See Also, See Selected Text, Lookup, and Option-click on a term.
Tags will be available in the final release of DEVONthink 2.0 and provide still another approach to relating documents to a characteristic, such as ‘author’. Any document can be assigned multiple tags, and tags are searchable.
Hi,
Thanks for the quick response! I’m looking forward to the final release; quick question about the tags - will they be readily viewable (i.e. a tags column) or will they be accessible only through show info? Thanks again