How to select documents & move their location with automator

DEVONthink Tips
1

I’m trying to develop an automator routine that will take documents in the general inbox and move them to a different database/group.

I can’t see how to select the documents using automator. I’ve tried the following & and variations but using step by step I can see that no records are being selected.
Questions

  1. How do I select the documents so that I can process them?
  2. Using automator is there anyway to select/filter documents based on tags?

Example Automator Routine


Set Current Group
Get Group Contents
Filter Records (As a test I used the label but really I need tags)
Get Selected Records
Set Current Group
Move Records to Current Group

Thanks

2

Have you considered just using straight AppleScript? It’s a much better option.

Also, have you seen the script Move with Keyboard from the Scripts > More Scripts? It appears as Script menu > Data > Move and allows you to move selected files to another location.

3

Thanks for your response.
Applescript is not an attractive choice for me.
I find I have an occasional use for it but the learning curve always seems steep.
A long long time ago when I wrote a little code I found that things like Fortan, Algol and Basic were much easier than master than AS, which seems, at least at first sight, to have more of a ‘random’ approach to programming than conventional languages. Had I regular use for AS it might be worth the investment but given the infrequent need I have it doesn’t seem worth the time investment.
In addition sometime ago I tried adapting some of the existing Devon AS’s to send documents to DevonthinkPro. I found that occasionally documents would be sent to the wrong location and there was no rhyme or reason as to why - just inconsistent behaviour that I couldn’t fix.

Sorry, don’t mean to deprecate your suggestion. I did consider it but at first sight it seems like a bridge too far.

Thanks

4

No worries. I find much of what is done in DEVONthink happens on selections. Here is my core (which I type countless times a week when testing)…

tell application id "DNtp"
repeat with thisRecord in (selection as list)
-- do stuff with thisRecord
end repeat
end tell

I’ve been AppleScripting a looooong time and it’s honestly one of the quickest and easiest languages to get some success with. I’d encourage you to revisit it. Cheers!