Means to append screenshots to existing record

DEVONthink Automation
1

During work meetings, I routinely use Snag It to capture screen shots and manually paste them into a DEVONthink rich text document. I also type annotations into the growing document. With the source and target window side-by-side in split screen mode, it is still a drudgery to click and paste, hit two returns, and so forth.

Can this be automated? Snag It can save clippings to a dedicated folder and this behavior can be turned on and off using presets. I thought a dedicated record in DEVONthink to aggregate the clippings and text entries would also work. At the end of the meeting, I could use the Split Document menu command to move the latest additions to a new record.

One potential option is a folder watcher script to read the new clipping file then delete it when finished. But appending the new image data to an existing RTFD does not appear to be trivial with AppleScript alone.

Another option is a DEVONthink smart rule that monitors the Inbox. There isn’t an action to Append data (would be a great addition). The File action creates a new file upon each execution. Can an embedded AppleScript obtain the incoming image data and append it to an existing record (of kind RTFD)?

Thanks,
Mike

2

DEVONthink’s Sorter includes “Capture”. This will take screen grabs. (A shortcut can be assigned in Settings.) Use this to send the screenshots to a group in DEVONthink. The screenshots can be merged (in DEVONthink) or dealt with in any other way you wish.

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3

I route Apple’s screenshot.app to save in DT’s Inbox (in Application Support for DT). This is automatically loaded into DT’s Inbox. They are always named "Screenshot [date/time].

I then use the the “Take Note” hotkey to open a new note in the Sorter, and drag them in.

Admittedly, this is done after the images have been gathered, and the notes are only added later, once they are in a single document together. This may not work for you.

There is also an “Append Rich Note” hotkey available in Apple Services for DEVONthink 3. I’ve never been able to use that predictably, but it might be work the inquiry.

– Gerry

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