Smart groups using arbitrary years?

DEVONthink Tips
1

Hello.

I’m slowly harnessing the different organization features of DevonTHINK Pro, and I’m currently creating some Smart Groups.

In this particular case, I have a folder filled with lecture slides dating back a few years. I want to create Smart Groups with the sole criterion being the year of creation - basically, I want to create 3 date-based Smart Groups: 2016, 2017, 2018.

I’ve found two somewhat inelegant solutions, but it works.

1: Tags. Use the year of creation as tags and assign them to the lecture files.

2: Smart Group with two criteria: Date created is less than or equal to Dec. 31, 2018 / Date created is greater than or equal to Jan. 1, 2018, and then duplicate and change the years.

Is there a more efficient way than what I’ve found so far? There is “Date created is…”, but the additional options are relative (today, this year, etc.) rather than absolute.

2

The second solution is probably the best one, you just have to set up the smart groups contrary to the first solution which requires thorough tagging.

3

I don’t see anything inelegant about your suggestions. I personally say to Tag with the year and any other tag that gives the file context, like 2016 and lecture. This would be a fairly trivial thing to do.
Then I’d create a Smart group searching for those two Tags, and duplicate the smart group and adjust the year for the other years’ smart groups.