Classify confusion

I have a database containing over 11,000 items that is indexed to my local hard drive and do not understand why Classify is not working as I expect.

When I select the “See Also and Classify” with a new document in my Inbox, Classify does not suggest the folder with similar content but the “See Also” shows documents form within the folder that I would expect Classify to be the top hit.

Why would that be the case?

Indexed groups have classification turned off by default, as the expected behavior is that you will be indexing into the database instead of also exporting documents out to the folder in the filesystem. You will want to enable (uncheck Exclude from…) classification for your indexed groups in the Info pane, and then the groups should show up in See Also & Classify.

If you also want to export those newly classified documents out to make them indexed as well, there are some tips in this post that may be helpful.

Great. Thank you for your quick and helpful response.

Jeez this is great! Took me ages to figure this out! I’m so glad I found this post. A real life saver.

While I totally understand the rationale that if the stuff is indexed, presumably the user wants to maintain the organization via Finder, but for me, the organization I achieved through finder is so haphazard I love being able to rework my index of journal articles based on DT’s AI.

Ah-ha! Of course, now I see the pitfall. If I move things around between indexed folders in DT, the changes aren’t reflected in Finder.

This isn’t a big deal per se, but it does mean that if I do a lot of shuffling around, things will get mighty confusing when I try and locate the file in finder/my iPad (via dropbox) and it isn’t in the directory I thought it would be!

I brought this up in a response to a thread you posted to in early December linked here. I’ve posted on this extensively over the years, and have been asked to put together a comprehensive post on the subject. If you are in a hurry for the info, you could do an advanced search of the forums on ‘index’ as the search term and my name as the author and I’m sure you’ll find plenty of info.

Indeed I have done just such a search for another reason (having learned a while back that you are rather well versed in the practice of Indexing).

At the time of that previous thread I was not entirely clear on some of the more nuanced details about how Finder and DT interact when indexing is used as I was (and still am) fairly new to DT. As such I likely did not completely grasp the exact meaning or the broader implications of your post.

This/these post/s (and their incoherence) is just evidence of my stumbling through the learning process.

I look forward to your comprehensive post when you get around to posting it.