I see that there are a lot of posts about automated ways to get annotations and notes from Skim PDFs into DevonThink. Seems like there’s no good easy automated way to do that, which is fine. I usually read and highlight a PDF all in one shot, so I don’t mind just doing “Export Notes to Text” in Skim when I’m done going through a PDF.
Once I do that, what’s the best way to manage Skim Notes?
What’s the best way to manually import Skim Notes into DevonThink? Do I need to “Export Notes as Text” first?
Is there a way to connect the Skim Notes text file with the corresponding PDF that I also have in my DevonThink database?
I’d like to use the auto See Also/Classify thing with the Skim Notes only, as a way for DevonThink to tell me what PDFs are related, but I want DevonThink to do that using ONLY my highlights (i.e. the parts of the PDF I deemed to be most important). What’s the best way to do this?
#1 and #2 are well answered in detail (with variations) elsewhere in the forum, IIRC
#3 – There is no way to tell Classify to limit itself to parts of a document. However,if you have a document that includes only the parts you are interested in, then you can get to the same destination. So, export your notes as RTF of as .skim and store that in your database. If you select the file that contains your exported Skim notes and classify that document (i.e., do not classify the original PDF) then Classify will suggest documents related to your exported notes. Of course, because the note file exclusively contains exported highlights from, or notes about, the source PDF, what Classify is really suggesting are documents related to your source PDF.
This is not an ideal approach for Auto Classify (though there are other steps you could take to adjust the information in your notes file and link it to the original PDF).