DEVONthink is capable of organizing many types of documents. But it’s also capable of importing information from your contacts, so you can use them in various formats.
First you need to give DEVONthink permission to see your contacts in macOS’ System Settings > Privacy & Security > Contacts. Then in DEVONthink, select File > Import > Contacts. You will be presented with the Import Contacts dialog window. Ignore the properties for the moment. Select one or several contacts. Now choose one of the three options:
- Link: This links directly to the individuals’ entry in the Contacts application, essentially a bookmark to the entry. The advantage of this option is it always shows the current information.
- vCard: Creates a standard vCard file (.vcf) of the contacts’ current information. This is a standard contact format that can be viewed and shared with others to be added to their contact management app.
- Sheet: Creates a sheet with one row per contact. The properties listed in the panel will be included as columns in the sheet. Toggle any you want to include or exclude.
While the sheet typically is more for an internal list of specific people, the link and vCard options can be used in other ways. For example, you may find some good uses in linking to a contact via WikiLinks or crosslinks. But also, the link and vCard are interactive. Click on the email icon when viewing a linked contact and a popup appears with email addresses to choose from. So launch an email or a message without opening the Contacts app.
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Thanks for the nudge to try and add contacts to my database building.
I just tried linking a bunch of contacts related to a project into that projects database. I can see this being helpful.
The one thing I noticed is that the note section isn’t populated in the linked contact in DT.
I use the Note section of MacOS Contacts to add “tags” for projects I work on with that person. Usually a 3-4 letter code and season number. This ersatz tag system worked as a way to get all the contacts narrowed down to import in the import dialogue.
Also, is there a way to convert a linked contact into a vCard?
When I finish on a project my workflow is to move any indexed ( I don’t index that much) files into the database and make it fully self contained and “locked” as of the time I finish the project. If I could do this with contacts it would match my other workflow.
Development would have to look at the underlying code to see if importing the note can be feasibly done.
Curious if this works in a similar fashion to the email importation. IIUC, the MacOS email client has a unique ID for each message and one can build a link to that message in other apps., as well as DT using that ID to tell which messages have been imported already.
My guess, based on how weirdly the Contact app differs from other MacOS apps is: no, it doesn’t.
Yes, each contact has a UUID but I can’t talk with authority about the underlying mechanism development uses.
One thing I have learned just now is that linked contacts from MacOS don’t connect to contacts on iOS, so that’s a vote against linking.
It’s actually the SMTP server that received the email first.
vCard and consequently CardDAV support a UUID to identify contacts. But Apple’s CNContact object does not expose this value. Instead, it uses its own device specific identifier.
Interestingly, the scripting interface for Contacts provides a class ContactInfo with a property id that “stays with the record” (quoted from the scripting dictionary). But I doubt that scripting is the way to go in this context.
