Page Order for PDF Export

DEVONthink
1

I’m currently working through some language videos, and I’ve been keeping notes in files and folders using number prefixes to keep everything in the order of the course materials, e.g.

01 Introduction
02 Letters
…01 Vowels
…02 Consonants
03 Sound Change Rules
04 Verbs

Within each folder, the file names are also prefixed with numbers to keep them in order.

If I do a PDF export however, the pages are jumbled up and don’t respect the order I’ve arranged things in.

Is there a way to publish a PDF in the order of the folder / file names ?

2

If you do a PDF export of… what?

3

The markdown pages within the folders.

I select the top group in the hierarchy and then select the Export to PDF option.

4

Screen captures of the group and documents along with the output would be helpful.

5

I’ve enclosed a screenshot of the hierarchy and another of the PDF output.

You can see the order of pages in the hierarchy is:

  • 01 Introduction to Verbs
  • 02 I Want To
  • 03 I Want Something
  • 04 The Verb 하다

In the PDF, the page order is:

6

Thanks!
What sort do the pages match, e.g., Date Created?

7

It doesn’t seem to correlate with date order.

Modified Date ascending order is:

  • 01 Introduction to Verbs
  • 03 I Want Something
  • 02 I Want To
  • 04 The Verb 하다

Created Date order is:

  • 01 Introduction to Verbs
  • 02 I Want To
  • 03 I Want Something
  • 04 The Verb 하다
8

Development will have to weigh in on this.

9

The Unsorted order is used (see View > Sorting menu)

10

I manually checked every folder and sub-folder and made sure the sort order was Name, Ascending and tried again.

The PDF still had pages out of order from their file names, even within a specific folder.

11

See above. Exporting uses always the Unsorted sorting of items inside (sub-)groups, meaning that you have to rearrange the items via drag & drop on your own if necessary.

12

Thanks, I understand now.

It’s already 80 pages long, so manual sorting would be too time consuming.

13

Alternatively you could replicate all items into a new group. Then select this group in the sidebar, sort the group by name or by date, select all items and finally use File > Export > As PDF Document…. Instead of a group & replicants you could also use a smart group to find the desired items.

14

One option that seems to work is a Smart Group filtering on Markdown, then set the view sort order to ‘Location’, select all items in the group, and then export to PDF.

Thanks for your help.