How would I approach a Smart Rule that would compare two standard date fields on a document?
For instance, If I wanted to find all of the PDFs where Created Date is the same as Added Date (or within a day of each other), would that only be able to be done via scripting? If so, how?
I doubt that’s possible with a smart rule. A script could find them, but afterwards…?
Smart rules don’t do such comparisions. It matches specified criterion.
And according to your query, you need a smart group not a smart rule because you’ve defined no subsequent actions to be taken.
Ah. So I was using the wrong terminology.
Is there a way to search for PDFs that have the same created and added date, whether it’s through Smart Groups, AppleScript, or other methods? The example above is good if I download and import on the same day, but that is not all the time. Plus I still have a lot leftover from my first months working with the product.
One could script it. Something like that
- Find all PDFs not tagged with “myUniqueTag”
- For each of them (
currentPDF
)
- tag it with “myUniqueTag”
- find all PDFs not tagged with “myUniqueTag” whose
creationDate
and addedDate
are the same as for currentPDF
- move these files to a special group
- Remove “myUniqueTag” from all PDFs
- Delete the special group with all its contents (or whatever you want to do with these files)
But: Identical creation and added dates do (in my mind) not mean identical content. What are you trying to achieve?
When I download PDFs, it inherits the Finder date info. So if I download it on Monday, it has a Created Date of Monday, even if it was created in 2020. Most of the time I import the day I download.
I have created a basic AppleScript here that can extract the “real” date metadata so I can organize by date.
DEVONthink 3.9 introduced the new hidden preference UsePDFDocumentDates
and therefore the script isn’t necessary anymore.
Excellent!
So when I run
defaults write com.devontechnologies.think3 UsePDFDocumentDates -bool TRUE
(DT3 is off)
It still imports with Finder date. Am I activating it wrong?
Zip and post the PDF.
What date do you expect and from where did you extract it?
Here are two reports that I downloaded today. They will always show up with today as created and modified until I change them. I have tried Global Inbox, copying, and moving from Finder.
IDC Marketscapes.zip (701.3 KB)
Did you attach those to your support ticket ?
After enabling the hidden preference and importing the files via drag & drop the dates are the expected ones. How did you exactly add them to the database?
The bundle identifier is actually com.devon-technologies.think3
.