I’ve been a long time user of DEVONthink Pro Office on Macs and also on iPhone.
Recently my iMac died so I’m now left just with my MacBook which has no USB connection for my print scanner.
I do have a Win10 PC that I’ve hooked the scanner upto, and would like to continue using DEVON to store and index my documents.
I currently have the scanner software linked to save PDFs to iCloud and I was thinking there must be a way I can automate the iCloud to DEVON sync to bring documents into DEVON rather than use iCloud as a backup for DEVON, if that makes sense?
My documents are stored locally and also sync with CloudMe.
Is this possible or is there a simpler way to get PDFs into DEVON that I’m missing?
No I was just thinking of a way to get paper documents scanned with my scanner attached to Win 10 and into my Devon database so I can then see them on my mac laptop and iPhone.
I think @BLUEFROG refers to the local cache that an iCloud client like macOS creates. Personally speaking I wouldn’t want to rely on a cloud service, whether it’s stable or unstable as it makes you dependent on that service.
If you’re comfortable with it and able to do so, you could also try and share a W10 volume over your network in such a way that macOS can mount it. There are security risks associated with that, and in some situations (usually business environments and similar) it is not allowed.
An alternative could be to buy a (simple) NAS that is able to use WebDAV and a recent network protocol that W10 (and macOS) can use (probably SMBv3). Please make sure though that your scanner software/driver can save the scans to the NAS. I presume it can if W10 has mounted the drive as a network share.
A third option could be to buy a WiFi or bluetooth scanner that allows an ad hoc connection with the MacBook. But that could require setting the connection up every time, and that might be fairly annoying.
Thanks for the info. I setup a shared folder between WIN-MAC and that seems to work well to get the PDFs onto my Mac.
One further question, is it possible for DEVONthink to watch that folder and automatically import those PDFs instead of me manually having to drag them over?
Edit - and also delete them from the share file once they are then stored in my database on the Mac?
One way might be to setup Folder Actions. These are Applescripts that run when you add files to a specified folder, including network shares. Folder actions can be somewhat unreliable though, and in my experience require restarting with every reboot.
DT has a Folder Action included called ‘Import, OCR and delete’ (or something with a name like that), that you can attach to your shared folder.
I’ve never been able to setup Smart Rules for a network share though, but to be honest I’m fine with the Folder Action so I haven’t tried it properly.
I’ve explained folder actions here, including some comments from @BLUEFROG about mounting shares in macOS (use an alias), indexing a network share and it’s limitations and a suggestion to use a smart rule (that didn’t seem to work for me then).
As mentioned: you’ve basically opened up W10 to your network, which might be an issue with regard to security. This is especially the case if it’s also open when you’re outside a trusted network, but might also be the case in a trusted network (e.g. when you inadvertently introduce ransomware).
Thanks for that. I’ll take a look, I also just realised I’m on an older pre v3 instance, so I guess I should look to update to latest version first as well.
Hi. I upgrade to v3 and I found and moved the folder scripts so I can see them in the menu. Trying to find how I configure the scripts or get some basic info on how to use/setup, particularly for the import, ocr and delete script? Could you point me in the right direction?