Is there a way to sync my tags folder from DTOP (with 4700 tags) with the tags in DSTGo?
I want tags to autocomplete and not replicate when I enter new data in DTTGo, and to sync back to my main DTOP database.
My device isn’t big enough for all the files in the DTOP database, but can I share their tags?
4700 is a VERY large number of Tags!
Are you sure this is necessary? If so, I’d love to hear about your methodology!
As I added items to my database I tagged them with relevant categories. With 1200 items I ended up with a lot of tags (4000+).
The main downside I’m aware of is that DTOP doesn’t have a “search for tags” option in the main window’s search field.
I don’t know how I should have done this better. Entering multiple tags seemed like a much quicker way of categorizing items than dragging aliases of each one into multiple manually created folders.
Now I fear I’ve been doing it wrong. Not the first time.
For instance, Tags for a recent bibliography item:
academic
anthology
book
helena simonett
humour
jokes
richard march
I don’t know how to connect all the items with those categories, so I used tags.
Except for the searching, it seemed to work. I don’t know what it’s done for efficiency of the database structure under the hood.
Tagging is a highly personal and subjective thing, in my opinion. You can find different views on what’s the “right” or “wrong” way to handle them.
Some will claim Tags should always be a flat space - each Tag isolated on its own in a list. This is how DEVONthink handles Tags, by default. I’m in favor of this approach.
Others claim a nested (hierarchical / taxonomic) structure is best because of the benefit of Tag inheritance. For example, you could have a structure of…
Author
American
Steinbeck
Tagging something “Steinbeck” would automatically get the “Author” and “American” Tags too. (And yes, this can lead to problems when people try and remove a Tag, like “American” here.)
It can also lead to Tag duplications that can cause problems. For example, say I add a new hierarchy of…
Cuisine
American
If I Tag something “American” should it get the “Author” Tag or the “Cuisine” Tag?? Actually, DEVONthink will choose the most recent occurrence of the Tag. Here I added one more Tag hierarchy…
Citizens
American
… then Tagged a document “American”
So defining the top level Tag in a hierarchy, or pulling out redundant Tags is necessary to make the system work as expected.
PS: There is no shame in having a smaller hierarchy and having redundant Tags outside it. In fact, it’s much smarter to handle it this way, in my estimation.
Remember, this is just a computer. A very dumb and VERY literal machine. It doesn’t see the contexts we see. We say, “Hey! It’s a book, not a restaurant!! So obviously it should apply the ‘Cuisine’ Tag!!!” The computer says, “What’s a book?” 
I hope this helps you think about the subject some.
My (unusual?) use of many tags works with the flat plan. I make relationships between items by adding tags to both. So the “rock” bands can be “country” music too by adding that tag, but not automatically.
But that’s how I ended up with thousands of tags. I want a way to quickly put items in those overlapping categories.
I’ve never been sure how my tagging reliance effects DTOP’s search algorithms. It seems to find things pretty well, though i really miss being able to search easily by tags. For me that would be a small but significant leap forward.
I’m still trying to figure if there’s a way to sync my list of tags to DTTGo so it will autocorrect to ease tagging of new items on my mobile devices?
I may have done this wrong already, I tried to drag the tags folder from my database to the tags folder in my synced Global Inbox. I fear it’s moved all the tagged files, which is not what I hoped to accomplish. Hmm.
Is there a proper way to share a list of tags between devices?
Why?
Note: You can select Tags and choose Data > Group Items (or press Option-Command-G) to group them.
You are likely not accessing the Tags group directly (ie. browsing the Tags), are you? If you say you are browsing them for search purposes…
- You can create Smart Groups to search Tags.
- Tools > Search > Advanced allows you to specify Tags as search criteria
- You can use View > as Tags, though with 4700+ Tags, this may not be as efficient.
It doesn’t. Tags are not currently used for the AI’s Classification or See Also, nor does it affect your searches.
It doesn’t on a drag and drop. It adds the Tag but duplicates the Tag group as a normal Group containing the document. Still not a good idea though.
Not out of the box, no - at least not in the way you’re describing it. Please start a Support Ticket for some extra info. Thanks!