Let’s say I’m wandering the web in Safari and come across something I’ve stored info about in my DevonThink database. My understanding is that I should be able to highlight a word or phrase on the web page and either select the “Lookup” submenu item from the Services menu or do the same action after right-clicking on the selected word.
When I do this, a “Search” window opens in DevonThink, but it doesn’t find anything in my database, even though I’m certain there are many instances of the word or phrase I’ve selected in Safari in documents within my DevonThink database.
I’d also appreciate a little clarification about how the Capture WebArchive service works. It appears that I need to select portions of a page; i.e., I cannot capture an entire page using the “Capture Web Archive” command; rather I need to select specific portions of a page to capture.
Also, it appears these services are available in Safari but not in FireFox. Is that correct as well?
When the search window opens, with the query already entered. inspect the search settings to confirm that ‘All’ is active, the scope is ‘Databases’ and no filters are set such as a Label color or an active filter in the ‘Advanced’ setting.
If the first Lookup search failed to find documents containing a term that you knew was present, it’s probable that an unintended filter existed.
Yes, the Service to capture as WebArchive using the keyboard shortcut ‘Command-%’ requires that a selection exists. Of course, if you wish to capture the entire page, click on the page and press ‘Command-A’ to select all - then press ‘Command-%’.
I prefer capturing only the portion of a page that contains the desired information, such as an article. Excluding extraneous content not only saves disk space, but can significantly improve the focus of searches, Classify and See Also.
My own preference is capture of selected content as rich text, using the keyboard shortcut ‘Command-)’.
You are correct. Those Services work in Safari, DEVONagent and DEVONthink’s browser. When I need to be able to capture data from the Web I avoid using any browser that’s not fully compliant with OS X Services, such as Firefox. Firefox doesn’t allow rich text captures. That’s apparently true of Google Chrome as well, unless it has improved from the early version.
Thanks for all that. My problem with the “Lookup” function was actually much simpler: after selecting text and invoking “Lookup” on it, I neglected to click the little “search” balloon in the search window!
As for the browser choice issue, I guess it’s time to return to Safari as my default browser!