Hey all – I’ve recently discovered DT. I’m already a paid user but I’m still learning as I go, so apologies if this is a dumb question.
I’ve created a new database and imported a folder’s worth of PDFs into it. My folder has about 40 subfolders, some of which contain another set of sub-folders. For some reason, though, DevonThink isn’t rendering that folder structure faithfully in the database dropdown, and I don’t understand why:
On my hard drive, all of the YEAR subfolders (2003, 2015, etc) are actually subfolders of the FINANCE folders, but in DT, they show up as children of my MAIN document. Likewise, ‘/Annie family board’ is a subfolder of ANNIE on my hard drive, but DevonThink has decided to show it as being it’s own thing.
Is there any reason for this? Am I missing something obvious?
I doubt that – at least if your screenshot is showing this folder. It only contains indexed objects. Did you in fact index the finances folder itself or only it’s contents?
I mean that I dragged the master parent folder (which contains all of these sub folders and documents) into the database. So I would assume that FINANCE as well as it’s contents would all be indexed?
Hm, after further reading, I think my issue came down to a lack of understanding of the difference between importing and indexing.
If I want DevonThink to directly manage/rename/move files in Finder and I’m not interested in creating a separate database, then I should only ever index my files, correct?
My use case is as follows: I have about ten years’ worth of PDFs (receipts, bills, tax returns, etc) and I desperately need something to organize them with. My file naming and organizing structure has been horrific over the years, so I’m looking for a software that can help me address this. I’m looking for a tool that uses OCR which can help me batch edit metadata, quickly apply custom filter tags and batch rename them according to their metadata. But ultimately I’d like to be able to continue to manage these files in the Finder rather than via a third party indexing tool.
It’s a bit like using a sledgehammer for a thumb tack, but DT is legitimately the only software I’ve found that seems to be able to do this, so I’m hoping to using it for these purposes (ie. as a light file management layer that sits over top of Finder) rather than as a fully functional database that makes its own copies of each original file.
With no value? I’m looking for a software that “uses OCR which can help me batch edit metadata, quickly apply custom filter tags and batch rename them according to their metadata” and DT seems to be the only thing I’ve found that can actually do that…!
