Hello,
I know you have to work on many things but real Smart Folders was a Feature that you wanted to realize a long time ago?
This Apple Script Solution has always the taste of a workaround.
Best regards,
Ralf Götze, Münster (Germany)
It’s of course no perfect solution yet but a good way to demonstrate the power of DT Pro’s scripting. And real smart groups will be part of v2.
Since this is sort of related, maybe this is a good place to post.
Is searching going to change in v2? I think if it’s somewhat like smart folders (or search in the Finder), it is slightly more friendly and easier to use; it can also be more powerful.
I’d like to search for any label not none. Maybe in v2? 
Searching will change in version 2.0. It will be much better than smart folders (alone), or the Finder. It will have the “big machine” Boolean capabilities already present in DEVONagent and EasyFind.
You can already do anything you wish concerning labels in a search.
Example: Set Labels to Any. Now sort the results (View > Sort > Labels).
Note that with any set of Search results you can select some of them, or sort and select items by sort results, then replicate them to a new group for furthur processing or whatever. You can retain the group (I often start organization of a new database by creating groups in this way) or delete the group containing replicants without affecting the existing files in the database.
Thanks Bill. That’s helpful.
I haven’t used DEVONthink very much so I’m still figuring out what it can do. I purchased it maybe 3 years ago but have hardly used it until now.
Viewing only items which have labels other than none would be nice.
Maybe the search in v2 will let you add criteria. Like label is todo or important.
Perhaps searching and the creation of smart folders could have a similar interface to make it easier to use.
Hi, Zarathustra:
About viewing items whose label is other than none:
If you search using the Any criterion for labels, you will pick up all records that match the search query text string and other search operator settings. So suppose your text query is “vacation AND California”. Suppose some of them do have labels, some red, some green, etc.
Suppose your label code is Blue = Important and Red = To Do. (Those are the ‘standards’ listed in Data > Labels, but of course you can use them any way you wish.)
Now sort the results by label. This will group together the Red label results, the Blue label results, etc. All of the results will contain your search terms, “California” and “vacation”.
You might use a search like this to remind yourself of some important things about the trip which might include the places you plan to visit such as maps, good restaurants and so on, which you can review in the Blue results.
Now go to the collection of Red labels and check off your To Do list, which might including booking your flight tickets, making hotel reservations and the like. So if you’ve bought the flight tickets already, you can change the label of that item to Green, meaning Done. But if you haven’t booked hotels yet, that label should remain Red.
Or you can create a smart group for each label color within your database. This will let you collect together replicants of all the unfinished To Do items in your database.
To do this, you will have to remember the numbers the script assigns to each of the label colors listed in Data > Labels.
In this case, Red = 1 (To Do), Green = 2 (Done) and Blue = 3 (Important) and so on. There are seven label numbers.
Go to DT Pro’s Scripts menu (the scroll symbol) and choose Smart Groups > Label. Enter “1” in the dialog and a smart group named Label 1 will be created at the top level of your database. It will contain all the documents that are labeled Red. They are all of your To Do documents. And they are replicants, meaning that you can throw this folder away if you wish, without deleting any “real” contents in your database.
Now you can search specifically in this group for “California” and the search results will display the To Do items for your California trip. If you wish, you can change (in the Search results) the label color of items you have completed to Green, meaning Done. And you can make a note of the tasks you need to complete and, if you wish, delete the smart group.
I don’t use labels very often, but will sometimes mark a document as a To Do to remind myself of an important task. Or I might mark a reference I plan to spend more time thinking about as Important.
So you can already do some of the things I think you had in mind, either by a search and then sort by label, or by creating a smart group by label and searching in it.
Any ideas as to when v2 will be ready?
Thank you Bill. This way will work great until we see v2. 