Thanks for the tip, will definitely try this application, didn’t know of its existence!
The developer of Hook is very responsive to any inquries/suggestions and the app is scriptable if it does not do exactly what you want or if you want to tweak the integration somewhat. He is a professor who has written books on how to efficiently use links to improve workflow so the app is well thought out and evolving as well.
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That’s really interesting, thanks. Have you any experience in retaining hooks when reinstalling macOS? I’m especially interested in whether I can hook e-Mails to documents in DT and retain those hooks even if I reinstall macOS, and Mail then reloads my imap mailboxes. Thx.
I would be interested in that as well, but it might be a topic for a different forum: discourse.hookproductivity.com_notalink
Just want to make sure we don’t loose the original feature request for DT in discussions about different app…
See some pertinent Hook discussion threads below.
I upgraded from Catalina to Big Sur and Hook works fine. It also works on other Macs where the same files are installed.
As for email, it may or may not work between different email accounts, different software, and/or between sender/recipient depending on what software you are using. Or you might need to tweak the Hook integration scripts. So that depends on exactly what you plan to do.
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Thanks very much @rkaplan 
Most kind of you.
@shmavon please excuse me for hijacking your thread. To return to your original question: I link documents in DT by using an annotation (Inspectors/Annotations & Reminders; ⌃3) to one of the documents into which I paste the relevant links. For any file who’s link is in the annotation, the annotation will be shown as an incoming link in the links section of the inspector.
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That’s a great idea. I just tried that too.
I just noticed one thing after doing this. It could be a bug, maybe @cgrunenberg could take a look?
If you add an item link to more than 1 other document as an annotation, the resulting annotation files (.rtf) are shown as duplicates, even with stricter duplicate recognition enabled.
That is, try to use 3 files. In 2 of those files, add the item link of the third file as an annotation:
The annotation files that both have the link to the third document are shown as duplicates:
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How does the content of the files look like?
The content of file 1 and 2 (the .rtf annotation files that are shown as duplicates) is just the copied item link from the third file in the first picture, i.e., Links between documents? - DEVONthink / Scenarios - DEVONtechnologies Community.pdf (as a clickable link to the PDF).
It’s easy to recreate:
With any 3 or more files, copy the internal link of 1 file into the annotation box of at least 2 other files. I use bookmarks in the following example.
Then, 2 of the newly created .rtf annotation files will be shown as duplicates.
Both have the internal link to the Google.webloc file as their content, as something like this: x-devonthink-item://13209BD1-5609-4191-B8E4-8987A1BFDCA1
Add at least another character or space to just one of the files in the annotation box and the .rtf annotation files will not be shown as duplicates any longer.
Then it’s actually working as expected if the contents are identical.
I see. I’d prefer if the name would be considered as well, especially with stricter recognition of duplicates enabled.
I just asked in another thread, but has anyone found a solution for finding duplicates but with the names included?I already have stricter recognition on , but they don’t read them as duplicates
Only the contents matter, therefore the only possibility would be to script this. But this could be quite slow in case of large or many databases.
I’m baffled by that fact that DT is not capable of doing such a simple operation as (manually) linking two database entries to each other. And when people bring this up as a problem they are told to jump through all kinds of hoops and use third party apps as a workaround. What am I misunderstanding here?
Here is a very basic use case: Let’s say there are two documents in your DT database: a letter and a letter replying to that letter. Doesn’t it make sense to create a link between these two documents (regardless of whether they are images, emails, pdfs, word-documents or anything else) so that when you look at either one of these, you see that there is an explicitly related document? And DT requires me to create a label that will be used for nothing else than linking these two documents? Or instead, I can annotate the document and insert a link into the document itself?
Apparently, the functionality is already there, but only for “compatible documents”. It states in the DY-documentation under “Document linking”:
Drag and Drop: You can Option-Command-drag and drop a file into a compatible document to insert an item link.
Why do you need a “compatible document”? Is it because also this method edits the file, writing the link into the file? But why? Why can’t we create a link between two items at the database level? Isn’t that the idea of relational databases?
Sorry, but I’m lost. Can someone help me make sense of this?
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DEVONthink 3 added custom metadata, which you can use to do what you’re talking about. Add a new field for links like you’re describing in Preferences → Data, then in any record’s data inspector, select the custom tab, then choose the file you want to link to in the newly-added field. See the Metadata section of DEVONthink’s Help (Help → DEVONthink 3 Help → browse to Appendix → Metadata, or search for Custom Metadata).
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Adding to this: Custom metadata is a feature of the Pro or Server editions.
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As others mentioned, there’s custom metadata to store the link
Also, all records also have a Finder Comments field that can be used
a letter and a letter replying to that letter
I select the records and create a group (an icon on my customized toolbar)
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@BLUEFROG
I’m confused too.
When can one add a link to a pdf document?
I have 3 pdfs in the item window. Each of them supports RightClick → Copy Item Link. However, only one of them allows me to RightClick->Add Link … The other two do not display that option. All three PDF items allow markup
- Why is that?
- How to I fix that? (so that I can add an link to any PDF in the DB?)
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What was selected in case of the failing documents and which version of macOS and DEVONthink do you use?