DEVONthink - Editions

Software
21

Take control is a great source to learn. I started by creating a dummy database and play around with DT .

22

That book’s an excellent starting point.

When I started, I started with a single project I was working on and used that as the hook to hang questions on - what did I want to store in DT, what was the easiest way to get stuff in, what format would suit best.

I would highlight three subjects you should spend time thinking about - these are things that I was confronted with as a new user:

  • Indexing vs importing. DT will index folders in the Finder. You might find that indexing a folder works better than importing all the files in it. This is especially the case if you want to access the documents outside DT (e.g. on a mobile device (but see below) or they’re in a folder shared with others (e.g. Dropbox). Indexing is 2-way - update the file in DT and the Finder version is updated, and vice versa.

  • Tags vs groups. Groups in DT are like Finder folders - a file can only be in one group, but it can have multiple tags, which is useful if you want to be able to place it in several different categories. My use case was project meeting notes - they needed to be under Meetings, Actions and Reporting

  • If you need access to DT on a portable device, look at Devonthink To Go. It’s not as well featured as desktop and needs some updating, but it’s an effective way to make your DT databases available on the move, if you need that.

23

This blog has got some useful posts on getting going with DevonThink. They were originally written in 2015 but has some good content about getting organised and some of the basic concepts in DT. The screen grabs are from previous versions but the points being made are very useful:

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24

Another great resource is their online community. https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/

The customer service is rock solid and they have tons of documentation.

As a new (less than one year) adoptee, there are many, many ways to do things in DevonThink. I would recommend starting small something like a specific project as a database and play with that.

My current issue is that my brain loves the idea of tags, however, tags don’t get the full benefit of the AI and so I’m still working through how I want to organize things.

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