At the moment I dont use DT for to experience whether I’m much quicker without. But it might be simply a question of my workflow.
Most documents comes in my macbook by attatchements or self-produced.
I had 5 databases with about 8300 Documents.
There is an email with an attachment in Thunderbird. How can I get the document in DT?
In the OS I open with a key my document window, I click onto one of my favourites, I change with a key stroke to TB and use the mouse to draw the attachement to its place.
In DT: I must first use the mouse to draw the attachement to the desk, then I can change with a key stroke to DT, in DT I choose the favourite, then I go again back to OSs desk, for to draw the attachment on his place.
It seems as if getting an attachement from TB to its place in DT takes a) more steps, b) more use of the mouse.
I write an document: How do I get it to its place in DT? I also must go a long way arround. - Well I put an Inbox into my Finderwindow - but I got the document in the general Inbox in DT, I had to change to DT, I had to open a second window or to use the “verschieben” action with and to choose there among a list oft hundreds of possibilities.
Searching: Well DT seems to be a litel bit mor practical! Why cann’t I search in in the searchfield (up right) directly over all databases? I always had to open the special searchwindow.
Send a file with email. A really wonderful possibility - I thought, but: It always came into TB as text in the textfield, never as attachment.
What are the solutions? What will be the better workflow?
You could e.g. drag & drop the attachment to the Sorter.
Why don’t you use the Take Note panel?
Thunderbird is (like e.g. Firefox) a poor Mac OS X citizen, its support for e.g. services or AppleScript is very limited. Therefore it’s not possible to send attachments via Thunderbird, only via Apple Mail, Microsoft Entourage/Outlook, PowerMail, MailSmith, Sparrow and Postbox.
I think all the things you cite are exactly why DT is better than the Finder.
I use Hazel http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php to automatically send all the PDFs, .docs, & .txts that land in my Downloads folder to the DT Global Inbox. I then use DT’s Workspaces commands to create two windows that allow me to transfer items from the Inbox to the right folders on my working database - or use the Groups window to do the same thing.
If I drag a document from the desktop or Finder onto the DTPO dock icon, it pops up with an HUD that allows me to rename the doc and file it straight to the right folder in my database structure. (Make sure that in Preferences, you have the Import:Destination"Select Group" option checked.
I can clip text from Safari or Mail stright to DTPO. DTPO records the source of the clip as a URL. Pure gold a year or two on, when you’re wondering where the clip came from.
I make templates so I can create new documents - BBedit, Scrivener, OmniOutliner - from within DTPO, in the same folder that holds all the relevant reference data. No hunting for folders in the Finder to save docs to - just create and save. Thanks to a Keyboard Maestro macro, I can create a doc, give it a dated heading, set the doc’s title and save it, ready to use, with a single hotkey.
Workspaces allows me to set up windows for a variety of workflows, so I can change my views of DTPO’s windows depending on the task to hand.
No time to give deeper detail, sorry, but this is why I use DTPO over the Finder. I’d prefer the simplicity of the Finder, but DTPO’s complexity actually makes life simpler.
Thank you!
That was the first really good hints for workflow with DT.
A very important (and for me the most complicated) question: What about the folder structure:
Scenery: I work in different areas. Within one area there are different other areas. Among them there are regularly conferences. For a conference I get the invitation, later on the protocol, several papers as basics for discussions and sometimes other documents, sometimes from years ago.
Till now I have a folder structre:
a area
aa area
aaa conference date
aaaa invitation (file)
aaaa documents (files)
aaaa … (file)
aab conference date
aac other area
…
ab area
…
…
b area
…
Now I get the protocoll of the conference as email attachment “194.doc”.
What to do?
Or: Is this kind of structure “too structured”?
In order to refind documents would it be necessary to rename “194.doc” (and all the others)?
I wouldn’t do that much structural organization. I would probably create a group for each conference and dump everything into it. You might tag some of the items.
Or you might create a rich text document template that holds the structure you want, and link from it to the associated documents.
