I am trying to find all powerpoint documents in my database which have been creater prior to the year 2000. This is of course very easy with the OSX finder find command but how do I do this within DT? I tried to create a smart group but can’t find a way to specify the search. What am I doing wrong?
See if this works
Generally, to search for all instances of a particular kind of document, use “Name matches” and the relevant extension(s) for that doc kind.
Strange! That shows about 30 of about 200 ppt presentations that I have in the database that would correspond to that criteria.
A couple of possibilities come to mind. One, “Date Created” is actually different than what you’re expecting - display that column and check it out. Two, more likely, your files are stored in the database without the .ppt or .pptx extension. Right click a file that you know should match the criterion, click “Show in Finder”, and see what the extension is.
Also, check this preference (DEVONthink > Preferences > Import):
It was set to “without extension” which should probably explain it. However, can I search via filetype like I can do in finder?
You are limited on the filetypes that you can directly search. Another spin on this is to create a smart group like the one pictured below, and sort the results by kind. This will give you all the documents that are of the kind ‘Other’, however all the PowerPoint documents will be grouped together in the list.
Yet another option is to create a tag for PowerPoint documents, run the search pictured above, and apply the PowerPoint tag to all those documents in the list. You’ll need to apply the tag to all newly created PowerPoint documents for the search pictured below to work in the future.
Not exactly like Finder. In DT, “filetype” is called “kind”. Smartgroups can search explicitly for certain “Kinds” - see the image. However, since DT supports a very large variety of filetypes (see the topic “File Formats” in Help), if you want to search for a filetype that’s not in the “Kind” list, then use the search by Name with extensions, as I mentioned above. The limitation is that if there’s no extension, then nothing is found.
Thanks, that does the trick!
Hi,
it would be extremely useful having “Powerpoint” (.ppt OR .pptx) as a KIND to search for or to use in a smart folder.
I myself would like to see all the Powerpoint files in my database.
Couldn´t it be implemented in DevonThink? Would be great.
Greetings from Germany and thanks for your wonderful product.
Frank
I use this Smart Group. It works.
