Semi-automatic way to organize files into DT

I use this trick almost daily, and it is fast and reliable. I use it to organize my web scraps and papers and other stuff got from internet. My flow is:

  1. Scrap or add via Finder Inbox documents into Global Inbox.
  2. Read, annotate (mostly in DTTG), process, tag, discard them.
  3. Remaining files will go to my “Scrapbook” database, auto-magically organized, but not by DT itself by with my own rules.
  4. Create two empty folders inside your “Scrapbook” database. I call them “zz_cache” and “yy_cache”.
  5. Have two Smart Rules like those:


  1. Then, once you’ve processed your files, select one or more and press CMD + CTRL + M, type zz or yy (this is the trick to go fast) and press enter.
  2. You hear your “pop” (“when you do pop there is non stop”) and files are
    a) if “zz”, classified by year/month/day
    b) if “yy”, folder organized by tags. Each tag is a folder, then for example: “math”, “linear algebra” will go into “math\linear algebra” group hierarchy.
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Is there a purpose to all these group hierarchies?
Personally, I use a single group called “Filing Cabinet”

type zz or yy

How do you decide which group?

Each tag is a folder,

By definition, each tag is already a group
So you have each record filed twice; in Tags/aaaaa and Scrapbook/lyc…/aaaaa

  1. Read, annotate (mostly in DTTG), process, tag, discard them.

I prefer to do my processing step on a Mac,
using a script to guide/assist with assigning name, tags etc
The script also handles the folder move

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It is “zz” or “yy”, not both. First one are stored in year/mm/dd to avoid zillions of files in same group, and same for “yy”. I know tags and groups are almost the same.

The reason to have two groups, as you ask, “zz” is for mixed web scrapping of anything, from literature to humor passing by news, etc (I call it gossip), and “yy” is only for tech papers related to sciences of my interest, basically math, physics and cosmology.

Periodically I go across “zz” ordered groups and delete things that are not my interest anymore, and “yy” are almost never deleted as they are true reference.

Related to processing step, I do it as well in my Mac except reading and annotating PDFs, that I do in DTTG as I’m not confident with native Apple PDF framework. If I need to annotate in macOS, I do with PDF Expert.