Autogroup

Suppose: a database with only! one containergroup with 1000 imported files of several types.

  • Can DTPO do some kind of autogroup? (select all 1000->autogroup) - or does it require a predefined group structure?
  • Are all file types included in the process?

Reason: it doesn’t autogroup my 1000 files.

Arthur Boon

Any help with this issue? 1400+ pdf db which should be autogrouped in my workflow, alas, DTPO does not respond.
Arthur

Think of autogrouping as if DEVONthink were looking at a pile of things to be grouped (your “1400+ pdf” collection) and comparing it to a collection of things that’s already been grouped in the manner you want to organize your data. DEVONthink needs something to learn from - a model, as it were - and that’s the collection of groups in your database. In your situation, you said you have “only one container group” So, there’s no model - no other groups that DEVONthink can evaluate to suss out the pattern of how you want to organize your data.

You don’t need to manually make groups out of all of the 1400 PDFs, but you’ll need to get a good start on the process before autogroup takes off and helps you. Say, by manually grouping 100 or so of those PDFs. (And, I don’t mean by making a second group with 100 PDFs - but by making a good number of smaller groups.)

Thanks for your help!
This might be emphasized in the manual, as it suggests your reply as being ‘Autoclassify’, whereas ‘Autogroup’ to be creating a - new - structure out of hundreds of ungrouped items (this is also explicitely in the book Getting started with… as one of the ways to create a database.
Arthur

According to the following reference: DTPO Manual, there must be something wrong with DTPO not autogrouping several hundreds of ungrouped items:

Auto Group:

It tries to find similarities between the selected documents and then group them accordingly. This is most useful, for example, when trying to create some sort of structure out of a few hundred documents that have been randomly clipped from web sites.

Auto Classify:

This command analyzes the selected documents and tries to find the groups where theywould fit best. If a document cannot be classified with certainty, DEVONthink Pro Office beeps and listsit in theLog panel.If DEVONthink Pro Office finds more than one fitting group, it createsreplicantsin all groups the document fits into. This function works best with a large database that is alreadysomewhat accurately structured

Arthur

I think you’re right. I created a new test database, put a variety of 50 documents into the only group in that database, selected them all, and ran Auto Group. DTPO (2.3.2) didn’t group anything, and basically stopped working. I couldn’t access any menu commands or navigate to any other database or view without shutting down DTPO and restarting. :neutral_face:

Thank you for the bug report! Unfortunately I couldn’t reproduce this so far. Has been anything logged to the console? Or could you please send the database or the documents to cgrunenberg - at - devon-technologies.com? Thanks in advance!

I also wondered why nothing is logged; it is empty.
Arthur