possible to export rtf notes while ignoring pdfs?

DEVONthink Tips
1

Hi,

This is a question about exporting specific kinds of notes from DT. I need to have access to my notes on a windows machine in the next few days (I don’t have a Mac laptop unfortunately!), so I need to export some reading notes I’ve made.

I have a database containing folders for each of the journal articles for which I have written notes. Each folder contains several rtf files (my written notes) and one link to the pdf file.

E.g.,
Article 1
-----note 1.rtf
-----note 2.rtf
-----the article.pdf
Article 2
-----note 1.rtf
-----the article.pdf
Etc.

*Clarification: I want to export the rtf notes, but avoid the pdfs. I only want my notes, not the text of the articles.

I attempted to export the database first as a word file, which was a mess since it included the text of all the pdf files in the database. I then attempted to export as OPML, which was promising at first, but only contained parts of my notes. Long notes were chopped in the OPML outline–the first four or so lines were there, but nothing else. I know I can export as Files and Folders, but I’d prefer to just have one file.

Can anyone suggest a better procedure? Or perhaps a way to export the OPML so that the notes aren’t chopped? Or a script to ignore the pdfs and just include the RTF notes in a Word file?

Thanks!
derek

2

I was able to export to a Word document by selecting the files I want to export (e.g., the PDF and a couple of RTF note files) and then using File > Export > As Word Document…

To get things in the right sequence, use Sort > Unsorted on your selected documents so that you can arrange them as you wish.

If the PDF has images in it, or is a scanned image, it does not appear to export to a Word document.

3

Thank you for your suggestion.

Unfortunately, with the nested file structure I described in my original post, it would be overly time consuming to open each folder and select only rtf files in order to leave pdf files out of my export. My pdf files are all text+image, so if they are included in an export, their text does appear, which I do not want.

4

Have you looked at Automator? You can Get Group Contents recursively, Filter Records for a particular document type and then Export Records on the results.

5

Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll have to look into that. I’ve never used Automator before (I’m new to Macintosh–I actually moved from PC in order to use DevonThink and Tinderbox), but hopefully I can use your suggestions to record a useful macro.