Hi - does anyone know a straightforward way to browse to a file contained in the DT database from within another application’s file/open dialog window? For example, if I create a new message in gmail and click on gmail’s attachment icon, i’m presented with a finder-like dialog prompting me to locate the file i want to attach. If i use the built-in spotlight field in the upper right corner of the window to search, i can find the document i’m looking for, but even though it’s a PDF it’s interpreted by the OS as a ‘dtp2’ file and as such it doesnt come through in legible form once sent.
File dialogs are great in that you can drag an item into them, and the dialog will show the location of the file you dragged in. So here’s what I do:
- I find the file I need in DEVONthink.
- I open the file dialog for another app
- I drag the record from the DEVONthink window into the file dialog, which will pop to the location deep within the bowels of the dtbase2 package
- I click Open to finish the dialog.
Works like a charm!
This method works but I’d really like to see DevonTech add a feature to see the DB from the open dialog so that you don’t need to move windows around and drag / drop.
A slightly faster method would be to open the file (in DT) in its default app, which is one click when you have the relevant toolbar button installed.
Then ctrl-click the titlebar of the file’s window, which will open a drop down menu to its location.
Two clicks, in all.
Even faster might be to use Data > Show In Finder, especially after assigning a shortcut via System Preferences.
Or, use the shift-command-O keyboard shortcut which DEVONthink always assigns to the default app for any document type. If you don’t want the default, then choose an alternate app from Data > Open With or Open With on the contextual menu.
Or, set your database(s) to be indexed by Spotlight and use Spotlight (or the search feature in Finder) or HoudahSpot, DEVONsphere, etc. to locate the file you want and open it for editing.
Really? Even if technically feasible (probably not), over here I’d be spending so much time in a file dialog navigating around the hierarchy of a database to locate a document that I’d be spending more time than doing what Alan suggested above: starting with the database and open the file from there.
There are a couple main areas that I need to find a document in DT from another app’s dialog: inserting attachments and uploading files to websites. DT has a send by email option, but if I’m replying or combining a bunch of different attachments in one mail, that doesn’t work too well.
It would be nice if DT could offer something like the Media views that are added to open file dialogs (pulling from iPhoto, etc) but I don’t know of any APIs that make this easy. I’d vote for it on a feature list, but pretty low on the list (esp compared to sync, better AI, metadata, etc).
