Syncing and Annotating PDF's between DEVONthink and PDF Expert

Software
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In another related thread, I read about using PDF Viewer to annotate PDF’s stored in DEVONthink. That application works well. What I just discovered, to my delight as a frequent user of PDF Expert, that you can do the same with PDF Expert. This means that I can continue to use my preferred PDF application. Here is a screenshot to show how to access DTTG on the iPad using PDF Expert. I tested this after extensively annotating a 61 page PDF. The annotations were flawlessly synced with DT on my MBP and my iPad.

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Slightly annoyingly, this design choice means that if you’re locked down and can’t use iCloud due to a corporate policy, ie a MDM lockdown, you can’t use devonthink as a document provider for PDF expert.

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That is certainly true. But depending on how your company has things set up, or locked down, there may be other access points – see screenshot.

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Absolutely, that’s how I use Box. It still seems odd Devinthink is part of iCloud and not documents or services

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@Ted_Martin Devonthink, in this case is not specifically part of iCloud (although one could use iCloud to sync), you are free to use a myriad of sync options, including Box/Dropbox/WebDAV/Bonjour-Wifi direct etc.

All that is happening here, is that Apple’s Files.app is being accessed, which in turn (assuming you have given access to DTTG2/Devonthink) is ‘browsing’ through DTTG2’s files. So @Bmosbacker is simply using the Files.app interface to access the DTTG2 files from PDFExpert, annotating, and then ‘saving’ them back to DTTG2 through the Files.app interface.

This is cleaner/simpler than the previous (but workable) options, that involved roundtripping files between DTTG2 and PDFExpert. Files.app is therefore simply serving as an interface go-between, in effect.
Similarly, one could access PDFs inside a Dropbox folder, from PDFExpert using the Files.app, and then have those annotations ‘written-back’ to that Dropbox/Box/GDrive location – assuming Files.app could ‘see’ those files in those locations.

Hope that clarifies things.

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What’s weird is I don’t like the non-intuatuve way that I have to browse the Files app to find my pdfs and such within Devonthink. Is there a better way outside of sending these pdfs to another service like Dropbox? Am I better off annotating with Devonthink’s annotation tools? I’m just slightly puzzled at this snaking around.