Automatically indexing PDF annotations (Bookends or Endnote)

DEVONthink Tips
1

Hi,

I’ve got a fairly large collection of PDFs, mostly in Bookends but can easily manage them in Endnote. What I’d really like to do is have easy access to the PDF annotations, such as highlights and notes.

Is there a way to import these as DevonThink notes? Would I have to do some scripting?

Still just starting out with DevonThink and trying to work out how best to use it — but finding it so much better than Evernote!

Lyndon

2

Thanks for the kind words. The Annotations aren’t easily accessible in a way to import them into DEVONthink. You may want to look at the functionality of the Highlights app, as it does have a direct export of Annotations into DEVONthink.

3

You are able to export the annotations from Bookends with an applescript. See this topic on the Bookends forum: https://www.sonnysoftware.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4078. The script formats the notecards made in Bookends into a markdown formatted document. You just need to save the file in a location that is indexed by Devonthink.

4

Thanks for those suggestions. Highlights would be ideal, but it doesn’t really work on recent MacOS versions (I realise that the cause of the problem was Apple’s stupid decision to break the PDF API, but the developer hasn’t made a release for six months, so in practice for what I want it isn’t particularly useful any more :frowning: ).

I’ll have a look at the BookEnds script option.