I have never tagged one item int DEVONthink Pro in since beginning years ago. Over the past week, 799 items have become tagged with no rhyme or reason to the color of the tag or why the artifact was tagged.
I would like to undo all of these without having to do each one individually. Any suggestions or directions to bulk-removal of all tags are appreciated. Currently, I have selected to “hide” them. Possibly a configuration setting was changed with the last update. I do not know but would like to deactivate it.
Are you using RSS feeds?
If so, disable Preferences > RSS > Convert categories and hashtags to tags
Thanks. I have never set up an RSS feed on DTPro 3 to the best of my knowledge but I’ll check as soon as I return to the my home office.
I’ve been very pleased just determining my own categories over the years and purposefully avoided tagging in all apps I use.
The other possibility is imported Finder tags or a smart rule generating tags (though the last is probably not likely from the sound of it).
Thanks. I use no tags anywhere in my Finder and all the Documents and Folders therein.
I do have one flag on one email in Apple Mail I am trying to maintain high visibility. But I have not imported the email into DT3.
No RSS feeds anywhere on my iMac.
Interestingly, of my four DB, all 799 tagging occurred only in my database entitled “Reference.” Several of the tags are the normally available colors. Others are specific names somewhat relating to the artifact. I did not make these tags but they are relatively accurate.
I would surmise I did something to generate this but have no idea what that could be. I should use the auto-classification but I simply place each item in the appropriate DB one at a time and then in the associated Group.
Well, the 799 is the number of tagged files not the number of tags (as evidenced by your screen capture). Are you saying you didn’t generate these tags?
Correct. I have never knowingly generated any tags.
After a “Verify and Repair” and also an “Optimize” of each DB, one day earlier this month I inadvertently selected “Index Files and Folders.” I something beginning to run in DT3 and caught that I hit the incorrect choice and “terminated” any further “Index Files and Folders.”
Did I mess it up that way?
Indexing would have the same effect as importing regarding incoming tags.
The only other options are in Preferences > Import > Tags.
Are any of those items enabled?
Thanks. Here are my import preference settings:
at least the colors (Blue, Gray, Green etc.) are most likely imported Finder tags.
Normally I would agree. The basic Mac tab colors are pretty standard. But I rarely keep any item in DT3Pro that is in my Finder. I endeavor to keep the Finder and the DT DB completely separate and distinctly different types of data.
There have been a few exceptions with instruction manual PDFs and similar but probably less than 50 documents in the last 5-7 years.
The only thing tagged in my Finder is the “2020” folders for financial information filing of account statements. The colored tag just catches my eye easier for dragging and dropping downloads from the bank to folders in my Finder. Though these are not imported into DT, if there were, they would be in the Finance.db, not the Reference.db where the 799 artifacts are tagged. I have never created the tags that appear in my listing of tags. I recognize the color tags are default. But all other non-default specific tags were somehow automatically generated.
I’ll just begin manually removing tags a handful each day. But not understanding how they appeared a week ago makes me uneasy. I take all the responsibility and blame but I am unaware of anything I did differently than just the normal scan and file/group.
What are you scanning with - DEVONthink or a third-party application?
They are seamlessly scanned directly into DT INBOX.
I simply purchased everything from Joe Kissell’s original book “Taking Care of” book and configured everything as simply as each step advised.
I have been entirely satisfied with DT on my iMac, iPad Pro, and iPhone Xs. Love it.
The ScanSnap has worked perfectly to deliver any item directly into DTPro3.
If all I have is a bunch of tagging, my troubles are small. My greatest pain is I have yet to figure how to recreate the main window I had with DT2.x. But that is another topic that i will research in the forum later.
Thanks for the info and nice comments!
It is indeed curious since there are a limited number of mechanisms that will tag files automatically.
Also, looking again at your tag list, six are non-color tags.
Are those six the ones you would have added manually? I’m guessing so. In fact, they all have only one document, so it logically follows you have one document tagged with all those six tags.
Do note: You can merely delete the tag groups you don’t want. It has no effect on the files in the database.
