but it is not easy to append an additional page to a single pdf document.
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Thank you so much - there is a really wonderful community here that is answering my questions. That certainly works to add a blank sheet to a document but not to allow me to import a scan of a new page directly in to an existing document.
I think I have not adequately explained my use case: I have to use paper documents in my work (I am a surgeon and we are still on paper notes in some settings). I receive letters in a variety of email, rtf, pdf, xdoc and paper. I need to keep images and displays from various bits of equipment of different vintages, not compatible with each other and nothing networked. I work in a variety of settings and I am not allowed to remove any of the documents from their settings, although I may take copies.
The medical record will contain one or more sheets of A4; with subsequent visits or operations added. So a single record will contain notes from many visits.
After years of evolution I have been forced into using simple PDF scans of everything. This is very easy on the iPad as I can print anything visible to PDF, and now use the inbuilt iPad scanning process to import paper documents. I tend to convert everything to monochrome unless I specifically need colour for size reasons.
I currently use Notability which works well as a store of PDFs; it is easy to append pages to the end of a PDF (from within Notability choose scan, black and white, import, PDF and a new page is added to the end of the document). However it is struggling with the number and size of files that I use and recently the updates have become a little unstable.
I would like to use DevonThink for stability, and so that I can start extracting more data from the documents - for instance to automate gathering addresses and writing letters. Some of the capability is absolutely amazing and I can take existing files and process them in useful ways. I was hoping to be able to eradicate Notability and use DTG on the iPad, with the heavy lifting being done on DT on my Mac.
That is why I am on a quest to append a single scan to the end of an existing PDF. If I can do this, I can get rid of the other app.
Hm. I just tried it, and there’s no problem at all to
- open a PDF on DTTG
- click on the single sheet icon in the toolbar (the one to the right of the “three dots in a circle” one)
- then click on the “+” icon to add a new page
- select the second icon from the left in the fly-over (the one with the stylized landscape in a circle), see the image here: iPad: direct pdf from camera - #21 by BLUEFROG)
- take an image with the iPad’s camera
- and have this image added as an additional page to the PDF
What’s your grief?
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One limitation is that process just yields a back with a background image, i.e., without OCR. Based on the next quote, perhaps that’s sufficient.
I currently use Notability which works well as a store of PDFs; it is easy to append pages to the end of a PDF (from within Notability choose scan, black and white, import, PDF and a new page is added to the end of the document).
There is no mention of OCR in that process, so it would appear you just have a lnegthening PDF full of images.
If you select multiple documents in DEVONthink To Go, you can select Merge from the Organize menu or via long-press > context menu.
I do this frequently. Prepare a bunch of reports, set “unsorted”, drag them into the order I want them to appear, select, and merge.
Or, open a DT PDF file in Preview, turn on thumbnails, and drag PDFs directly from DT into Preview’s thumbnail list. Preview also has an insert blank page function, if you need a separator or handle page order imposition for a booklet.
Where there’s a will!
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handle page order imposition for a booklet.
Brings me back to many years in prepress and printing 
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I would keep the ‘subsequent” documents as separate records
linked within a group; or by a tag
Thank you for your input, I do appreciate it. My grief is that when I use my iPad camera to import into notability it launches something that looks like a native apple interface to allow me to centre, de-skew, and convert to monochrome in the scan. And takes the image automatically once it is stable. This then inserts as an additional page of A4. The whole process takes me about 15 seconds from being on the document to having inserted a new pdf sheet for a single page. It would be even better if it used the same interface as the notes app does that uses ocr. But at least it is not a colour photograph of a bit of paper which is what the process you describe yields.
This is not asking DEVONthink to develop their own OCR or scanning application, just asking if they are able to plug in to the existing framework. If they did it would open their application to a lot more people.
We are well aware of this feature in iOS and you can be sure we will support in due course.
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