I’m working with DevonThink Pro Office 2.3.2 on MacOS 10.6.
I’m having a problem with my workflow: I do not want to rely entirely on DevonThink Pro for browsing my files, so what I’d like to achieve is:
a folder hierarchy in Finder which lets me organise and open my files from there (without having to open a database)
but it shall be indexed in a DTPro Database and I want to use DTPro to add tags, create replicates (only in the DB for sure) etc.
My problem:
I’m finding myself creating new groups in DTPro or moving files and those changes are not automatically mirrored in the indexed folders.
There is a context menu feature to write files which only exist in the DB to the indexed Finder folder (so far so good), but when I try to move a file in the DB, it will not be moved in Finder …
Is there currently a way to really live the double life I want with Finder AND DTPro?
(I fear it is not, as I see that not all the changes in the DB could be reflected in Finder).
Well, you are closer to achieving this than you may think, depending on how often you move files around in the database. There is, as you mention, a contextual menu command to move files in the database to an indexed folder. Once they are indexed, the contextual menu function changes to move (import) the document into the database.
Given that, you could move the document into the database, then move it to another (indexed from the Finder) group, then write the document to the indexed Finder folder. This may work well for you, assuming that the document locations in your database remain for the most part static. I would find this workflow tedious if I moved documents around frequently.
The other challenge with this is that your replicants are not going to be mirrored in the indexed Finder folders. I don’t know how one would ever remember which Finder folders contained what when the same documents are replicated to multiple groups in the database. I have some indexed databases, but I don’t ever try and navigate the folders in the Finder to locate the documents.
Hm, why I want to do that?
On the one hand, I’m using DTPro Office as my inbox, tagging is easy and powerful and I like it for organizing documents.
On the other hand, I sometimes want to quickly access the documents, which is easy with Quicksilver when the folders are located in Finder.
Furthermore, I’m working with LaTeX files in those folders, so when compiling, the auxiliary files are created in the same place as the source and pdf files and I’m not sure how that would work within a DTPro Database…
Let me explain an example of my broken workflow:
I’ve been collecting documents in the internet (job offers), they get into the inbox tagged with “joboffer”.
I then would move them to my database and create one folder for each company where I store the job offer, information about the company I found, notes on phone calls, etc. and where I’d also create my application letter and the customized CV and the pdf with references etc.
OK, I see my mistake: I’ll have to decide where I want to do the sorting and creation of subdirectories -in Finder or in the database and then I’ll have to stick to that workflow and do it always the same way to avoid confusion or duplicates…
But sure, I see the problem that not everything which can be done in the database could be mirrored in Finder and that this could lead to confusion…