Hi, everybody!
My question might be more of a workflow than a troubleshooting, so I kindly ask Admins to move this topic wherever they feel it belongs.
Here’s my need: I used to have a (big) dBase in which I kept everything I needed for my conferences and speeches. And when I say “everything” I really mean it: papers, books, weblinks etc.
I recently changed the way to keep my “e-Library”, and decided to have a (big/huge) folder in Documents and let DTP to index it.
Now, I find myself in the need to “export” all old materials into this new folder, and anyway I would like to leave a “link” into my speech dBase, so that should I go back to a topic I already studied I don’t have to begin from scratch, but I can find some materials (that’s the reason I put everything I used for research into the “speech/lectures” dBase).
I can easily do it “one-item-per-one-item”, but I know (or at least I hope so…) that some of you are real code-guru’s and may be helping me building a script for doing this “on the fly”.
Any help would simply be great (even any suggestion and/or criticism on my new workflow)!!!
What is it about your database that is not working and leads you into to want to convert internal groups into indexed groups?
See if this helps. I also suggest locating Greg Jones’ postings on using indexed groups, which provide a lot of precise and helpful advice.
Be aware that in most cases if you move indexed documents in the filesystem (say, from folder A to folder B) then your database will lose track of the documents – I believe Greg has a posting with advice on how to handle the move.
First of all thanks for your kind and fast(est) answer!
Simply put: I realized that I might have many duplicate materials (say papers, books etc), each of them “linked” to a particular speech/conference. Now: my first problem is to reduce duplicates, while maintaining all necessary materials into each speech/conference folder.
Let me try and explain with an example: I had a speech on topic “A”, and put into this folder paper “b”, book “c”; I had another speech on topic “B”, and put into this folder paper “f” and “b”, and even book “c”. I don’t want to simply delete them and put them into my new /Documents/e-Library folder, as I might want to have all materials I used for that particular event (say: I need to write a paper on that particular conference I held), but of course I can’t have all duplicates.
So my solution was/is to introduce a new workflow: I now create new groups for each conference, but I put all materials into my e-Library folder (outside DTP).
If it’s not a thousand-years job, I would like to “uniform” this new method to old groups too…
I’ll read the post you pointed me out ASAP (I’m quite in a hurry, now… just had time to answer and thank you)!
I see the problem, now. Are you familiar with creating replicant documents in DEVONthink? A replicant is “like” an alias, but it is really putting a representation of a single thing into multiple locations. So, if you have books in your “eLibrary” you could replicate a book to a speech, and you could replicate a speech to a conference. This is just my view of the world, but I frequently use replicants in my databases in cases where I have an artifact that I want to repurpose for multiple studies or events – similar to your speeches and conferences. Replicants are better than duplicates because there is only one “real” document (saving storage) and if the content of a replicant is changed, then all replicants of that artifact are changed. Here’s a picture for illustration.
Rearranging your database to use replicants is going to be just as much work as rearranging it to use indexed documents and the end point is going to be about the same. You can always replicate an indexed document, too. Using replicants will be slightly “safer” in the sense that you can mess up a database of indexed documents if you don’t take care with the procedure for moving documents in the file system. But, I think you’ll find the consensus among long-term users of DEVONthink that there is no “right way” – there is no “right answer” to the “index or import” question.
Thanks for your monkey-proof workflow.
I’m quite familiar with “aliases” and “replicates”, at least now. But when I begun using DTP I evidently wasn’t or, at least because of rush, I didn’t care about duplicates.
Now: what if I wanted to keep original docs outside DTP and not inside a Library group? I’m not talking about the (endless?) discussion on the opportunity to keep everything inside/outside DTP (btw: thanks for your link to this discussion…).
I’m really talking about how to make it work.
I mean: I have some hundreds of pdf’s inside my Conference dBase, and I would like to move them from inside DTP to eLibrary folder while maintaining their replicates.
Ok: I can do that by hand or I can see if the script you linked some posts ago can do that.
