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Create Your Own Templates

September 5, 2017 — Jim Neumann

DEVONthink comes with a variety of pre-built templates for various things, like taking a phone note, making an annotation file, or even creating a project. But what if you have a need but no template? You can easily create your own.

Perhaps you have an RTF file you duplicate and reuse because it is styled as you like it. Add that as a template. Or maybe you have a Markdown document with custom CSS you like to use. Add that as a template as well.

In the Finder, press ⇧⌘G and paste: ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink Pro 2/Templates.noindex . (DEVONthink Personal users would use the DEVONthink 2 folder instead.) You can add files directly to this folder, or create your own subfolders, and they will be available as templates in DEVONthink. If you are styling a document in an application and want to save it as a template, you can save directly to the Templates.noindex folder or drag existing documents to it.

Also, if you have a document in DEVONthink already that you’d like to make a template, choose File > Export > as Template (which saves to the Templates.noindex folder by default).

Bear in mind, you can even add files that aren’t directly editable in DEVONthink. For example, you could have a meeting minutes document in Word format (.doc is preferable over .docx as it previews correctly in DEVONthink). Add this file to the Templates folder and it’s ready to use. Even though you can’t edit the file in DEVONthink, you can still add it as a template, then open it in Word directly from your database.