Intelligent auto-fill

When I scan a bunch of stuff, it’s very time consuming to have to go back and rename the scans, add tags, etc. I’d like to see Devonthink have more brains and offer auto-fill suggestions, based on what similar items were named/tagged.

For example when I scan in similar items, like utilities bills, paycheck stubs, etc. you would think that it would not be hard to program in some intelligence to help name the scans. A simple thing you can do is for DevonThink to autofill the file name with the first 2 or 3 words of an OCR’ed document into the title.

I am not too impressed with the auto classification. It will find some stuff, but not find items that are common and should be easy to classify. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to when it works and when it does not.

thanks-

Autonaming is not an easy thing to accomplish. If all documents were the same, then it potentially would be easier, but alas, they’re not.

Also, classification does not just happen. You need to consider DEVONthink like you would a newly hired assistant. You wouldn’t throw a pile of documents on her desk and just expect her to know how and where you want them filed. Similarly, if you told your assistant to take a bunch of files and rename them but gave him no instruction and how to determine what the name should be, would you fault him for not doing it “correctly” (whatever thay may be)?

DEVONthink can make correlations that we may not have seen but it also learns as you work with it.

Thanks for your reply. OK, how about using the first few words from an OCR’ed scan? Yojimbo did that, and it really helped out. An easy way to consolidate tags would be helpful, too.

Jim

Could you describe what you’re hoping for here? The first thing I thought was: Select two Tag Groups, then Data > Merge (or right-click > Merge). This will merge the groups leaving the first item’s name (and this does depend on the sort method, otherwise it’s likely to be alphabetical). If you want, hit Return (as the Group is still selected) and you can quickly edit the Tag.

I did no know that! Thanks!

No problem. :smiley:

I capture papers with descriptive titles from journals to which I subscribe.

Select a document, then select the text string you wish to make the document Name. Press Command-I. Presto! That’s now the Name of the document.