Sometimes a mishap occurs and an item in DEVONthink finds itself in a location where it simply doesn’t belong. You may have accidentally moved a document to the wrong location, e.g., dragged into the wrong group in another database. Perhaps it was classified incorrectly. Or maybe you accidentally trashed an item and just found it in the database’s Trash. But fortunately, there is a simple command to restore the item to its former location.
To move the item back to its previous location, you can use the Put Back command. Select the item in its new location and choose Data > Move To > Put Back, or Control-click and select the command from the context menu. If your item has been classified incorrectly, for example, and the action appears in Window > Log, you will also find the command in the context menu by Control-clicking the entry (as shown in the screenshot).
DEVONthink remembers the item’s previous location even if you quit and relaunch the application. But be aware this only moves the document back to its previous location, it is not storing the history of moves to continuing moving it back to older locations.
Classified a document incorrectly can’t find it. Log is empty. No activity since this error. I have a rough idea where I put it, but finding it will be cumbersome.
In this case it’s not a big deal, the document is inconsequential, but I’d like to use this as an opportunity to better understand the Put Back command and the log.
I was moving quickly through a pile of recently scanned docs in my global inbox and I hit ^c too quickly. I had seen this post a while ago so I thought I would put it into action.
How can you put something back if you don’t know where you put it? What actions get logged?
What is the timeframe in which you lost your document?
If you classified one you could then press Command-L to jump to the location to which it was classified.
If you have made other moves, then make use of search to locate it.
Does Command-L map to a menu item? That might be easier to remember.
Also, your blog post left me with the impressions that I’d be able to find this action in the log.
I stopped working immediately after this, specifically so I could find and learn to use the Put Back command. So it was the last thing I had done and just a few minutes ago.
No wonder I’ve had trouble finding it. I haven’t upgraded yet. Command-L seems to be the answer for me.
I’ll have to experiment more.
Off topic: While I have your attention, can you direct me to anything covering best practices for OCRing in ScanSnap Home vs. letting DEVONthink do it? not much comes up when I search. Seems like it’s a bit faster using ScanSnap. No idea about accuracy.
wow - “put back” is a very useful feature. would it be possible to show the location, where the item will be put back, when hovering over the “put back” menu item (as DTP4 does it, for example, when showing the full path/location of a group when replicating an item).
Thanks for the suggestion! This would be only possible if only one item is selected or if all selected items have the same former location but it’s noted.
