When trying to use the sorter to collect PDFs from the web, DEVONthink ended up importing a number of web internet location files instead of the PDFs. I can convert the file to a PDF, but only a few at a time it seems. When I go to convert a larger number, it simply duplicates the web internet location files. I may have misread the explanations of file conversion in the help, but I don’t understand how to convert the files without going one at a time.
Does it work after restarting the app and/or rebooting the computer? Which version of DEVONthink and of macOS do you use?
Thank you. Versions are macOS 10.15.5 & DEVONthink 3.5.1. The issue persists after restarting the app and the Mac. If I ask for a conversion of, say, 30 files, I get about 3 successful conversions to PDF and about 27 duplicates of the original file, unconverted.
If I can provide any additional information, please let me know.
Are the bookmarks still valid? Is anything logged to Windows > Log? Are you able to reproduce this using a certain bookmark or does it only depend on the number?
Yes, all the bookmarks remain valid. The creation of the duplicates is logged in the log window. The issue is reproduced based on the number of bookmarks to be converted exclusively, and is not dependent on any particular bookmark.
The creation of the duplicates is logged in the log window.
Please post a screen capture of what you’re referring to.
No problem, in the screenshot I asked DEVONthink to convert 33 bookmarks into paginated PDFs for offline archival. It converted five to PDF, and duplicated the rest into more bookmarks. The duplication is seen logged.
DEVONthink will capture a bookmark as a fallback if it encounters an issue.
Clear the log and try converting 5 at a time to see if that works.
Yes, five worked just fine without showing the log.
However, when I tried 20, it failed again.
Is there a limit on how many files DEVONthink can queue for conversion? Or could it be I am doing something wrong here?
The number of items shouldn’t matter. Could you please export the bookmarks, zip them and send the archive to cgrunenberg - at - devon-technologies.com? Thanks!
Alright, will do. Thanks for the help on this.
I have encountered same problem today and found this post. It seems there is a limit for how many items you could convert to pdf at same time, or if you launch many converting tasks all together, some will crash and a duplicated bookmark will be added instead.
I also observe that failed web pages often contain images, or other content which makes loading time longer. Is there a mechanism that is a web page loading longer than a certain it will considered failed?
It is been two years since this post, wonder if anyone have found a solution or will this be fixed?
In the meantime, if you select fewer at a time, does the conversion work for you? Is there something special about these web pages that might b causing the issue?
That is the interesting part. Now I think it is more about the size of the webpage rather than the number of tasks. For a heavy webpage, for example contains 20 high resolution images, which require some time to load, even the webpage will loading complete eventually, devonthink will quit loading and return a bookmark instead. Feels there is a timer that if the loading didn’t complete in certain timeframe will be considered failed.
Didn’t read the whole thread, but you could try to
- select everything in Safari
- drag to DEVONthink’s icon in the dock
This creates a webarchive which you then could try to convert to PDF.
I’m confused, what do you mean by ‘select and drag’? You mean command+A to select everything and drag?
Yes, ⌘+A, then drag to DEVONthink’s icon in the macOS dock.