Organizing Downloaded/Imported Files

I have never used any type of db so, I will preface all of my questions with, if there is a better solution to what I’m asking, please let me know that!

First, to keep my files organized and my desktop uncluttered, I would like to instruct DevenThink to organize all alike files (pdf; jpg; doc; pages, etc) together in their seperate folders. Is there an easy way to get this task accomplished?

Inside the database package file, DEVONthink does store imported, downloaded and created (inside the database) files by filetype.

But I would find that very counterproductive in choosing an organizational structure of groups in my database.

Instead, I create groups to hold documents that are related to each other in some way, regardless of their filetype.

For example, I’ve got a group that holds articles, reports and books about energy topics and issues, subdivided in various ways including ‘Fossil Fuels’ – which in turn is subdivided by groups dealing with ‘Coal’, ‘Petroleum’, ‘Natural Gas’, etc.

What’s important to me is the information content of the documents stored in a particular topical group, and not the filetype of those documents. The documents may be plain or rich text, PDF, HTML, WebArchive, email, Word, Pages, and so on, but filetype is irrelevant.

If I’ve indeed created groups and populated them with documents that are relevant to each other, the Classify artificial intelligence assistant becomes useful in suggesting one or more groups that would be suitable for the filing location of a new document I’ve just added to my database. But Classify would be clueless were I to organize my groups by filetype.

I am a fairly new user, and it takes time to get used to to but Devonthink has this way of growing on you when you realise the capabilities. The possibilities are almost limitless

I would definitely just initially make some simple groups based on your own work projects. You can always add to this later.Your database will inevitably grow and evolve and you will add things.As a start it is important to have a simple folder/group structure.

Then simply you can use Smartgroups to identify PDF’s, Word documents etc, as per your requirements

You can also use labels to identify important documents.For example I use labels (Really Important, Less Important, Need to read Urgent,Need to read less urgent, Task,). Then you can use Smartgroups to identify these. Therefore Devonthink has become my productivity hub as well as a storage/database.

I also use tags (for example expenses). Then you can search for these documents. For example at the end of the year I can look for expenses (under tags) .Look also for the utility of adding plain text to your database.In the example above I could have bought a item of equipment to claim against expenses. I could add a simple plaintext note which will be tagged and searchable later.