Sometimes, people do indiscriminate dumps (import or index) into DEVONthink or DEVONnote, imagining it to be a Finder or Spotlight replacement. This is really no more truly effective than the junk drawers we all inevitably have at home. And it leads to more false positives in searches and use of far more resources than it needs to. (more)

Capturing email messages is one of the most common things people do with the Pro editions of DEVONthink. If you switch over to DEVONthink Pro Office at some point, the already imported email won’t be indexed, only newly imported messages. We show you how to reindex the older ones too. (more)

If you are collaborating with others and using Dropbox as a DEVONthink sync location (never putting your database in a Dropbox or automatically cloud-synced folder), it is not possible to sync between Dropbox accounts. This means you need to have a shared account where everyone using the sync data will need to know the name and password to access it. This can create a problem because you would be giving everyone access to the whole account! (more)

DEVONthink allows you to get a URL for any document or group stored in your databases. Select the item, then choose Edit > Copy Item Link. Then paste this link into any other suitable application, e.g. the URL field of an appointment in Calendar, a website field in Contacts, or the notes field of an OmniFocus task. (more)

Recently we have posted a tip abouthow to quickly create a table of contents). However, sometimes it’s necessary to update a table of contents manually. This short screen movie shows how it works. (more)

DEVONthink and DEVONnote users tend to collect and organize excessively. This leads, inevitably, to databases with large amounts of items. A table of contents helps you stay ahead of the ever-growing pile. Select the documents for which you want to create a table of contents, then choose Data > Create Table of Contents. The application builds a nicely arranged rich text for you with links to all the other documents. (more)

Here’s a quick tip that is simple, but probably not so obvious. When you select Tools > Search or press Command-Shift-F in DEVONthink, it brings up the powerful Search window. Use the menu command or press the shortcut again and DEVONthink will open another search window. You can keep the results of one search while you start another, and another, … You can keep as many search windows open as you can mentally manage.

DEVONthink Pro (Office) lets you save files directly to the database using the watched Inbox folder. This folder is deeply buried in your Library folder but added to the Finder sidebar for easy access. It also appears in Open and Save dialog windows. (more)

When importing email, Apple Mail is going to provide the best performance as it supports native plugins. Other email applications require the use of Applescript to interact with DEVONthink and we can’t guarantee the performance, especially with large mailboxes. But if your email client supports an export to the UNIX .mbox format you can drag the exported .mbox file to the DEVONthink Pro Office dock icon to scan it for messages. (more)

If you are working at lot with PDF annotations the Mac application Highlights is for you. You can use it not only to manipulate annotations but also to extract annotations from documents and send them directly to DEVONthink Pro (Office). In addition it offers plenty of more export options including sharing annotations by email and saving them as Markdown. (more)