I built a Smart Rule to find documents with Content = xxx and Size = < 1MB. I applied the rule and then searched the document shown in the View/Edit panel for the text entered in “Content = xxx.” I entered the text in the toolbar search box and DT switched to All Databases. It was only by clicking on the Smart Rule in the lower part of the Navigation pane that the Smart Rule appeared below the search bar so that I could select it. Then, of course, the document shown displayed the results of my search text in yellow. Before I stumbled across the solution, I looked in the Help manual for assistance but didn’t see this little trick. Did I miss something? Where is this explained in the manual?
I’m not sure I understood exactly what your question is. Is it how to search inside an open document? For that you use the Search Inspector (⌘F). See Inspectors > Search in the manual/Help.
The search field in the toolbar is for finding items in your databases. If your query searches file contents (like the content/text prefix does), search terms are highlighted in the results if possible.
See Windows > Main Window > Search Pane in the manual/Help. (It also has a section on Search Scopes).
See Settings > General > Search Scope
I could include screenshots to demonstrate what I’m doing but they take up a lot of room. If you need them, please let me know.
- Create Smart Rule with Content = Drake Lumber
- Click on “OK” in the Smart Rule dialog box
- The View/Edit Pane shows 251 hits but if I select one of the hits, the Drake Lumber keyword is not found - no yellow highlighting.
- I then type in, in the search box on the tool bar, “Drake Lumber”.
- The items in the Vew/Edit pane change to documents with the keyword highlighted in yellow.
If this is normal behavior for DT, I’ll keep going. I would have thought, though, that after creating a Smart Rule, I would have had to select “Apply Rule” first before any results would appear. That is not the case. The need to enter the keyword in the search box in the tool bar throws me off as I have already entered that keyword in the Smart Rule. When I am given the opportunity to type the keyword into the search box with quote marks enclosing it, the list changes to show the number of hits with the filtered results, 240, which is to be expected.
I must be doing something wrong but I sure don’t know what that might be….
Thank you!
T
In DEVONthink, hold the Option key and select Help > Report Bug and include any visuals that could be helpful.
A smart rule is not really meant to search for something. It is meant to select records according to certain criteria and then act on them (change their name, OCR them, tag them, whatever). Your “workflow” as you describe it makes very little sense.
If you just want to find documents with certain attributes, enter those attributes in search bar to the right of the toolbar. Then you’ll get a list of matching records. Clicking on one of them will show you the matches in this record in a yellow highlight. See screenshots below
And you might perhaps take some time to read up in the manual (available under the Help menu) about Smart Groups, Smart Rules and all that.
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Did you enable Display: Highlight Occurences for the smart rule?
A smart rule is basically a smart group (= a saved search) plus a list of actions to be performed on matched items, activated by the chosen triggers.
When you select a smart rule in the navigation sidebar, you see the items the rule would perform actions on. The initial search is not an “action”.
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Thank you. I’m a slow learner!
Thanks. I’ve solved my problem.
chrillek:
I’m still learning how to efficiently use DT. I appeciate your suggestions.
No worries!
What was your solution?
Bluefrog:
I focused on the database icons below the tool bar, not realizing that I could click on the database in the navigation panel to change the database being searched. There are an awful lot of icons and text phrases to process in the main window….
Noted and indeed the Selection scope is contextually dynamic so the search is applied as the selection in the Navigate sidebar changes.
I would recommend reading the Getting Started chapter and Windows > Main Window section of the built-in Help and manual.
Bluefrog:
I already have - multiple times. The manual is very difficult to understand. I’ve read portions of it three times and still don’t understand what is being conveyed.