Hello everyone,
I’m facing a challenge with connecting specific documents in DEVONthink and would love to hear your solutions.
Currently, I organize my documents in two ways:
- Groups for dividing into main topics
- Tags for general categories (such as “memoranda”, “notes”, “subject X”)
The problem
When working on projects, I sometimes want to link very specific documents together.
Example: I’m working on a facility agreement for Client A. This agreement has specific terms and conditions attached, and I’m making notes about this. All documents are in the “Client A” folder and have relevant tags to the documents such as “facility agreement”, “note”, “Terms and Conditions” etc., but:
- The “Client A” folder contains many different documents for these documents to stand out on itself
- When sorting by group or tags, these three specific documents don’t appear together due to the fact that they don’t have a ‘common’ tag;
- Using very specific tags for this reason would eventually lead to thousands of tags (unmanageable I think)
As set out above - the only way is to use really specific tags but that would eventually lead to having thousands of tags (which would not be feasible I think to manage).
Therefore, I am looking for a way to group those exact three documents together, knowing that they belong to each other. As the terms and conditions and the facility agreement will not be edited (but only for reference) it would not make sense to include an item link into those documents.
Also - I would rather not rely on external applications like “hook” and would rather have it in DEVONthink itself.
What ar your best practices for these kind of situations?
Many thanks for thinking with me and your advice!
One possibility (and maybe the easiest one) is to create another group, then replicate the desired documents into this group (e.g. via drag & drop while holding the Command-Option modifier keys or via the Replicate To submenu of the contextual menu)
Thanks! That could be an option indeed - though I’d rather want to avoid yet another group. I am currently already nested in the 5th layer.
I thought maybe there would be a ‘hidden’ option by ‘forcing’ the see-also section, or multi-directional links instead of bidirectional links. Or maybe some other unconventional method!
(I have no clue so therefore reaching out 
)
Why don’t you just use a color label, a flag, or some custom metadata to mark those specific files?
Custom metadata could work! Totally forgot about that one. I think these can be adjusted quite versatile right!
DEVONthink is so feature rich, I sometimes get analysis paralysis from all the options
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Given the simplicity of your requirements, the options I mentioned are well suited IMHO.
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Yes this was exactly what I was looking for. Many thanks!
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While you’ve tried to explain the situation, I still struggle to understand exactly how your setup looks and what the problem is.
Do you have no subgroups in “Client A”? Just everything in one big list?
Maybe changing how you group things would solve it. For example: one group for general files related to the client + groups for each project. Then you can replicate files to different projects when they are relevant?
Client A
├── General
│ └── (Subgroups if they make sense)
└── Projects
├── Project 1
├── Project 2
├── Project 3
└── ...
Or just
Client A
├── _General ("_" stays on top when sorting by name)
├── Project 1
├── Project 2
├── Project 3
└── ...
When viewing the top “Client A” group you can use the different filtering options (Tools > Filter > …) across everything. Or you could create local smart groups for specific views.
Why not? I don’t understand.
You could use the annotations inspector for a list of relevant documents?
Thanks for this elaborate response!
Maybe I should’ve explained it in a bit more detail. I do have subgroups. So I have:
- Database called “Assignments”;
- in which I have Client A, B, C etc;
- For each Client I have Project 1, 2, and 3 etc.
So it’s already fairly nested to have the documents sorted.
Let me given an example what I’m trying to achieve.
I’m a legal counsel. So it could be that Project 1 has General Terms and Conditions to be reviewed. In another database called 'reference materials" maybe is a general note about General Terms and Conditions. I want this to show up or to be isolated with the General Terms and Conditions of Project 1, but I do not want to tag this general note with “Project 1”, as this note is relevant for a lot of documents. So, (at least for me) it does not make sense to tag it as such.
Furthermore, I also archive my emails in a separate Database called “Emails”. The relevant emails regarding this topic I’d want to have it isolated with the documents in Project 1.
Lastly, maybe Project A has 100 documents at the end of the Project, but the General Terms and Conditions are only relevant with three other documents from Project 1. I’d want to have them isolated in the “Project 1” group without creating (yet another) separate group.
So ideally, I’d have some sort of custom metadata (?) that I can click on and show all documents linked. For bidirectional links it’s not the best option as this only links two documents, and therefore does not isolate all the relevant documents.
I also don’t think that an annotation would work as this is only linked to one document. let’s say I make an annotation for the General Terms and Conditions with the relevant links, this annotation would not not show up for the other documents (like the emails that are linked to Project 1 for instance).
Does it make sense what I’m trying to achieve? Or am I looking for a solution for a problem that is not there
Many thanks!
The custom metadata itself isn’t clickable to show documents but it is searchable and can be used for smart groups. I still think this is a good option.
Get to know some of the tools DT offers. “Copy item link” on the context menu can be used to link a file or any number of files, and it can be used reciprocally. The link that is copied can be pasted into another DT document or its annotation pane. It can even be pasted into any other Mac document. (It behaves better in some than others.) If used outside DT, with DT not running, it will open DT and display the target document.
There is a “Copy paragraph link” that behaves the same but provides a pinpoint link to the paragraph you want to link.
I do as @Yclipse suggest. I create an annotation file on my main document (annotation pane) and paste links in to the other connected documents.