I need to hide the column “Name” in column view because (a) it wastes space that I need for something else, (b) it is hugely distracting and (c) I almost never want to see it and when I do I will get it from the side bar.
Can you allow us to deselect it please, as we can the other possible columns?
If that were a poll, I’d vote against it. Making the name column optional would probably lead to a lot of unhappy people that forgot they turned it off and now think their UI is broken.
Really columns view or actually list view? The sidebar shows only databases & (smart) groups, there are no documents in your database(s)?
Sorry, I mean the columns in “View as list”. The middle of the screen
Maybe, but my experience is that the customers of DevonThink are in the main much brighter than that. Besides, that’s what the help pages are for. Moreover, very additional functionality creates the sort of risk that you fear, it’s easily manageable, if indeed this particular suggestion would cause much risk at all. Moreover, it would provide a means to resolving some of the other users’ concerns about not being able to rename the source file by changing the name in DevonThink.
Any thoughts, please?
There are no such plans yet as it’s the first request of its kind.
Well, I see that quite a few people are struggling with the complexity of DT already. Which is not meant to say anything about their brightness – it is a complex product with many bells, whistles and details to take into consideration. Removing the (for many people, I suppose) important name column from the view would just add to this complexity.
And given that a great amount of discussion here focuses on the renaming of records, I guess that there’s quite some interest in actually seeing these names and using them.
I’m not quite sure to what you’re referring here. What is “the source file”? And what would someone then want to rename in DT? Are you referring to imported or indexed files?
Yes, please clarify what you’re referring to here.
Many thanks
Some previous posts from others have asked if they can change the filename of the file on Mac from within DevonThink, and the answer is no — if I have understood correctly. I quite understand the reasons for this not being possible, and I agree, it’s good risk management. My thinking is as follows but may be unique to my use case (thousands of files already in DevonThink, and a strict naming convention for all files on my Mac, beginning “YYMMDD …”. ). I often need to find files related to the files I have in D/Think, and can easily do that by the YYMMDD beginning of the filename. However, in D/Think, I do not want these six digits appearing on the name, as it wastes space (an even bigger problem if I cannot hide the name) and is redundant given that I use the optional metadata from DevonThink, and display it, for the date. I want to be able to retain the easy ability to see the connexion between, outside D/Think the format “YYMMDD NorV Rest of filename” and what, for speed and ease and neatness and concision I want in D/Think, which is “Rest of Filename” only. (By the way, “N or V” is also handled in D/Think’s optional metadata, “Nostro” or “Vostro”.) I am thinking that: I could import the old files without renaming, “YYMMDD NorV Filename” but in a custom metadata field show a new name, which is the truncated old name “Filename”. Others might prefer to use the same ability the other way around, which I believe might solve their requirement for renaming the base file.
Stepping back, why I want to do this is to be able to ensure that I can always, quickly, have an auditable link between the file as filed in DevonThink and other versions, usually temporary ones live for a few days only, outside it. Auto-generation of JSON metadata would be an even better way to do this, but I understand that that is not likely to be done in the next few years.
Finally, for the same reason, I would like to be able to search on the DevonThink UID for a document, which I can easily extract from the metadata. Is this possible please? I have tried the search bar and nothing is found despite the documents with UIDs that I know being in DevonThink, e.g. “30-B3B8-5D1AE6E99348”.
It’s in a previous comment / suggestion from someone else.
This isn’t the case anymore since version 3.0.
@pete31 wrote a script to apply the reference URL to the alias of a file. You could then search for alias: xxxxxxxx.