I recently struggled in using the smart rule “Create Back Links - Smart Rules” by Bernardo_V that is promoted in Kourosh Dini’s “Taking smart notes with DEVONthink”.
As I could not find the resolution to my issue online, I thought writing this post might help others.
After initially setting up the smart rule it turned out that it would only create return links for aliases but would ignore item links and wikilinks. It took me while to find the cause of the issue.
The point was that I had turned on Settings -> General -> Appearance -> Show filename extension. Due to this setting the smart rule would be looking for the item names including including the filename extension, but in my notes I had written the linked items without the extension.
Since I turned off the option “Show filename extension” the return links are properly collected for all new documents that I added. Unfortunately for the existing documents the issue persists. If I want the smart rule to generate return links for these documents, I have to manually add the filename extension in my note e.g. writing item note1.md instead of note1.
Having resolved this issue I am very glad to finally have solution for backlinks in DEVONthink. So my thanks go to Bernardo and Kourosh.
Best regards,
Christiane