Any way to create interconnected files?

DEVONthink Tips
1

Hi,

I’ve got certain files that have a kind of interconnected relationship with each other. For instance, I’ve got RTF files for interviews, which usually have corresponding audio files (which I index in DTP), and transcripts.

Is there some way to connect these files to each other? Or at least indicate, through some means, that there are other interconnected files attached to certain files?

Thanks!

2

There are several ways:

  1. Item Links (right click on anything in DEVONthink and you’ll see “Copy item link”. These can be pasted either into a document, or in the comments or URL fields of an items’ metadata. So you could paste the item link into the RTF file for the corresponding audio file, and paste the item link for the RTF file in the URL field of the audio files metadata.
  2. You could use tags, and corresponding files could be given the same tag.
  3. You could replicate related files into groups.

I generally like item links because they’re flexible and don’t necessarily rely on changes to my organizational structure that 2 and 3 do to some extent.

3

Select the documents and use Create Table of Contents from the Data menu or the contextual menu. The resulting RTF file can be a portable list with links to all the related files. You can add other text to the table of contents file – i.e., notes explaining the relationship of the individual files.

4

I use for this kind of special, one-off relationships Groups, while I use Tags for general commonalties.

So my Groups have titles like “Visit to the Darwin Aviation Museum” or “ANU Graduation 2018” while my Tags carry names like academic-paper, macos or zouk.

I’m not 100% happy with this (beacuse most items are groupless lumped in one big area), but at least it is a clear distinction what to use groups and what to use tags for.

5

Thanks, everyone!

There doesn’t seem to be a perfect solution to this, and you’ve all come up with various clever hack solutions. It seems like the “Copy item link” of a corresponding file, and then pasting that link into the comments section of a file is one good way to go.

Of course, that also means doing that for each file, and that seems like a lot of work! Maybe there’ll be another solution in the future…or some script that can copy/paste those links into the comment sections of each inter-connected file. (I don’t have the tech ability to do it, alas!)

Anyway, thank you so much again! Really appreciate the help and input…

6

@jprint714: Why don’t you just tag those related files and create a smart group to “gather” them in one place?

7

That’s a thought. I try to use my tags for other purposes, but will give it a shot.

I try that and the other approach, and will report back.

Thanks for the suggestion!

8

No problem.

9

That’s pretty cool! Didn’t know about this one. (Just a shame that the result is RTF and not Markdown…) - Thanks for pointing it out!