Rationale for separating tags for each database?

DEVONthink
1

I’ve been having trouble organizing my tags and I keep finding duplicates, many of which are empty. I realized that DEVONthink is separating tags based on the database. Why? I think of tags as universal attributes that span all projects and databases. Isn’t this the point?

For example, with my current setup below (database, group, document) let’s say that I want to search for everything related to inhibitor x. If I click on a tag in the left pane, I expected to see all documents with #x throughout all databases. Instead I get three separate tag groups. It seems like tags are acting bascially as groups rather than labels

Research

  • protocols
    • product sheet for inhibitor x (tagged #x)

Data

  • experiments
    • experiment using inhibitor x (tagged #x)

Study

  • papers
    • study using inhibitor x (tagged #x)

Another thing. For a while I had the preferences set to convert keywords to tags when importing documents. This resulted in many unexpected tags that I didn’t want so I deleted the tag groups. But I just found out that if a document in my inbox has a tag and I delete that tag, the document is also trashed!

Can someone please help me understand the best way to use tags? They seem to be functioning different than tags in bear or evernote

1 Like
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Why? I think of tags as universal attributes that span all projects and databases. Isn’t this the point?

Not necessarily, no. In fact, it’s usually quite the contrary when people use separate databases.

Databases are separate entities from each other, no different than books on different subjects are. A glossary in a book about birds has terms you don’t necessarily want in a book about woodworking.

It seems like tags are acting bascially as groups rather than labels

A tag group functions as a group by design in DEVONthink.

Do a search for tags:search term and make sure the scope is set to All Databases.

They seem to be functioning different than tags in bear or evernote

These applications are not comparable to DEVONthink here. They are essentially single-bucket applications, so obviously there’s no real data separation like there is in DEVONthink.
Also, the implementation of tagging can (and does) vary app-to-app.

But I just found out that if a document in my inbox has a tag and I delete that tag, the document is also trashed!

This is not true.
From the Help > Documentation > Getting Started > Tagging…

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I specifically create a new database when I need to isolate some content from the tags in my main database.