Some new user questions

DEVONthink Tips
1

Hi, I am a new user and have the following questions. I am trying to use some different databases, one for e-mail archiving, others for more generic information.

  1. Is there a way to have view preferences per database? For e-mail, I’d like to list columns such as Author, or To/From, that would be inapplicable for the other information in different databases.

  2. Is there a way to show tag names as a list item column? Sometimes they appear as Keywords, but only for messages that were imported. If I manually set the tag via DevonThink, it doesn’t get assigned to the keyword.

  3. Is there a way to create a smart group that shows all untagged messages?

2

Yes, the view settings are configurable for each database.

Tags and keywords are not the same thing, but no, there currently is no way to select tags as one of the items in a list column.

This shows all untagged email messages. Change ‘Kind is’ to ‘Any Document’ if you want to see untagged documents.

3

Thank you for this very helpful and prompt reply.

The smart folder you suggested shows many messages that are actually tagged. I wonder what the problem is…

4

You might want to confirm that you have the Instance condition set to ‘Is not’. I just tried it on one of my databases where everything is tagged-the Smart Group did not list any emails. I then imported a new email, and the Smart Group correctly returned only the newly imported, untagged message.

5

In DT, groups are tags. DT considers the name of the group(s) that a document resides in as tags. Thus, documents will appear in a smart group that looks for tagged documents.

You may turn off this behavior on a group-by-group basis by right-clicking a group name and chosing “Exclude from Tagging” in the contextual menu. Or, to turn off the behavior for the whole database open File > Database Properties… for the database in question and deselect Exclude Groups from Tagging. Note that the database property set in this panel can be overridden for a group by using the contextual menu.

The way to see if a tag is a group tag or a tag is a “normal” tag is the color background of the tag label in the Tags bar. Gray-background tags are groups, blue-background tags are “normal” tags.

6

korm is spot-on with his explanation and suggestions. Personally, I have turned off Group tagging for all my databases as I found it preferable to create ‘normal’ tags.

7

Greg:

In response to a question about creating a smart group for untagged docs, you answered:

“This shows all untagged documents. Change ‘Kind is’ to ‘Email’ if you only want to see untagged email messages.”

But the link to your attached illustration is broken. The same advice seems to be in a few other posts too, but in each case the rackspace host no longer serves up the tasty image. What was the answer? I can’t seem to figure it out, though I blame it on the late hour and little sleep.

thx

8

Yes, for years I had all my screen grabs posted to Tiny Grab and now they are all gone. I’ve uploaded a new capture to my original post.