Hi. I had to rebuild my database and in doing so I lost some of the links of annotations to their respective pdfs. Is there any way to rejoin an annotation to its “parent” pdf?
Many thanks.
Don Spady
links of annotations
Can you clarify what you’re referring to here?
Perhaps a screencap?
Thanks for your fast response. I messed up my files database by confusing 2 nearly identical folders containing only pdfs. I deleted one of the folders and then rebuilt my database from the other folder. In doing so, some of the files that were annotated (using the annotation part) lost the link between the annotation and the referenced pdf. The annotations still have blue underlined words, which I assume are links (and they make sense that way) but the links don’t work.
There is not a lot to screen cap.
It is not a total loss, it is just a stupid mistake and if I have to I can work around it, but restoring the link would be very useful.
Don
You’re welcome!
There is no current mechanism to restore the link automatically.
And when you reimport/reindex files manually, they receive a new UUID but don’t have a record of an old UUID as it’s a new import.
Well, you live and learn.
Thanks for the help.
Don
You’re welcome.
It’s an interesting thing to think about.
What I did, because one of the docs was quite important, is just to go through the pdf and the annotation side by side and quickly make a new annotation with the old one as a guide to the links. Went quite quickly, but if I had 20 or 30 it would be a real pain.
Don
In June, 2021 I did as you asked, but don’t recall if there was any resolution. At any rate, the question remains. Specifically, if one works on a pdf and makes annotations, using the annotation box, and then, for e.g, converts the pdf to a searchable pdf, the original is deleted but the new one is NOT linked to the original annotation.rtf file. Is there some way to connect them and retain the links that were in the Annotation (e.g. PAGE ‘n’, for Quote). I suppose I could link them by copying the file link, but that is messy and I lose the links that were existing in the Annotation.rtf file.
Thanks
Don
Why are you annotating the PDF before annotating doing OCR on it?
- Because I am not totally logical.
- I have made changes to Preferences so that pdf’s will be OCR’d to searchable as they are entered into the database. The worry I have about doing that is that some pdf’s can be several hundred pages long and that will really slow down the OCR process. Now if there is some way to identify those that are not already searchable before the conversion occurs and still during the entry process, that would be nice.
Don
Via a smart rule?
If not, how are you adding the files into the database?
And I don’t think Development can fix the first issue 
Thanks for the comments.
- Re the first issue: that is life, and at my age, very likely significantly greater than yours, an unlikely fix.
- I enter the files into a folder that DT scans automatically. It is an external database.
- I am not too ‘into’ smart rules (see 1 above); my coding skills, such as they are, were gained in the 1980’s, but not used for at least 10 years, and then with stuff I knew about. At any rate, what rule would apply. Even DT does not seem to query that. If tell OCR to create a searchable pdf from an already searchable pdf, it does so. That makes me think that DT is dumb in this respect and just does as it is told, regardless of the input.
Don
The smart rule which goes with that is really simple:
Word Count is 0 ensures that only PDFs without a text layer are OCR’d.
Thanks very much for this. Unfortunately it doesn’t work. I created the smartrule using your screenshot as a guide. Below is a screen shot.
I wasn’t sure about INBOX or not, so I did it that way and also did it using the name of the database into which the file was to go. I did not do it with the folder in which the files were put before they got into DT.
I then tried it with some files I knew would not annotate properly (i.e. underline/highlight). Identified them, copied them to an external folder, deleted the original in DT, then put them into the DT file folder and shortly after they were in the DT database, but still could NOT be annotated. When I manually ran OCR -->searchabe, on these files, they converted easily.
I wonder if this is the problem,
- because the files ARE searchable (maybe not perfectly, but I can search and find specific words; after OCR sometimes there are more words), they just are not annotatable. So, only doing those with a wordcount of ‘0’ won’t work.
- ALSO, under preferences, the Default is Convert Incoming Scans “To Searchable PDF” and move original to trash. I don’t think this is happening.
Ideas?
OCR > Apply doesn’t create a new item, therefore nothing’s moved to the trash.