[Updated] How to make DEVONthink respect Text Alternative view selection?

Update: I’ve discovered that it is when I save the document in question that DEVONthink switches to Best Alternative view, presumably because it has to reload the document. Although I understand why it would do this, ideally the app would be smart enough to remember and apply the Text Alternative view selection.


I work heavily with Microsoft Word documents and regularly need to do relatively complex searches. Therefore, I need to be in the Text Alternative view 100% of the time while searching. My problem is that even though I select the Text Alternative view, the app will periodically switch to Best Alternative view on its own while I’m working. (I haven’t timed it, but I would guess somewhere around every 5-10 minutes or so.) This behavior started out as merely annoying, but it’s steadily trending toward maddening. Is there any way to force DEVONthink to respect my Text Alternative view selection until or unless I change it?

No this is currently not possible to do. Development would have to assess this request.

1 Like

Thanks @BLUEFROG for your reply. Since I posted this, I’ve discovered that DEVONthink also (a) doesn’t search Microsoft Word footnotes or endnotes and (b) created nearly 200 duplicate recursive subdirectories under the directory I was working in, so I won’t be continuing with DEVONthink, but it was fun to play with for a while.

May I ask what exactly „I was working in“ means as DEVONthink doesn‘t create groups automatically.

Does this e.g. happen after a sync of the database(s)?

I mean I had imported a folder of folders and files. I was using DEVONthink to search a Microsoft Word file in one of those folders. At one point I had to open the folder for another purpose in Finder, and noticed a new subdirectory with the same name as the parent directory. Curious, I opened it and it contained copies of two files from the parent directory, as well as a subfolder with the same name as itself. I opened that one to see the same two folders and subdirectory. I opened that one to see the same. I opened about ten more down the chain to make sure it was an exactly repeating circumstance, and it was. I then looked at the parent folder information and saw that there were about 170 new subfolders. I could of course be wrong, but the only thing I can ascribe this to is DEVONthink.

I realized later that this was happening because I was saving the document I was searching and DEVONthink was reloading the document and defaulting back to the Best Alternative view. So I stopped saving the document while using DEVONthink to search it and the behavior stopped.