DEVONthink supports already a multitude of file formats from plain text to Markdown and PDF. For everything else it uses the available Spotlight metadata importers to extract text for its full-text index. Quick Look helps it to display a file’s contents on the screen. The true beauty of Spotlight and Quick Look lies in their plugin architecture. If there’s a plugin for a file format the system can search and preview it. And so can also DEVONthink. (mehr)

Names. Names should allow us to quickly identify something at a glance. Tiger. Yeah, I know what that is. 2012 Taxes. Got it. 4d0f1bfec91ff2472.doc… wait, what?!? To make things easier we can create a more specific name, like BankOne VISA - January 2018 Statement - PAID - 2018-01-15.pdf This is certainly more clear but such long filenames may not fully display in all applications or on smaller form factor devices. And word-wrapping can sometimes add to the confusion. (mehr)

Sometimes you are working along in DEVONthink and realize you want to check out something in the same group, or maybe a group in the same hierarchy. Command-click the name in the title bar of a document window to show a dropdown of the hierarchy the file resides in. Clicking one of the locations will open it in a new window leaving your current window open behind it. (mehr)

The built-in spell checker in OS X is quite handy and available from within all Mac apps including DEVONthink. But there are many times when it thinks you’ve misspelled something when you know you haven’t. And while it may be nothing but a cosmetic annoyance to see the dashed red line under a word, you may want to teach the spell checker a thing or two. (mehr)

Getting your articles from Instapaper to DEVONthink automatically isn’t straightforward, unfortunately. Power user and former DEVONtechnologies crew member Annard Brouwer has written a great little script that takes a CSV file exported from Instapaper, converts it using Numbers, and imports the cleaned up result to DEVONthink Pro or Pro Office. (mehr)

Some of you have expressed the desire for a hotkey to show or hide the DEVONthink Sorter. Instead of waiting for us to implement yet another hotkey, you can easily do it yourself.

Now you can start and stop the Sorter as your leisure. Note that you can use this to start and stop e.g. the Web Sharing server in DEVONthink Pro Office, too. Also, note that this method can be used in applications other than ours. You just need a menu item that toggles between two states. (mehr)

One of the most overlooked menus in any application is the Help menu. Not only is it the best place to start looking for, well… help, but here’s a way to use it you might not have thought of. (mehr)

As you work in DEVONthink, you’ll come to find yourself going to the same places over and over again. It may be opening a certain database, working in a certain project, or other daily uses. These are perfect items to add to your Sidebar Favorites. (mehr)

Out-of-the-box DEVONthink displays and searches many file formats including PDF or Office documents. For files it doesn’t understand it uses Quick Look and Spotlight to make their proprietary content usable. With these two free plugins you can add the .epub file format to your system. As soon as you’ve installed the plugins, DEVONthink shows at least book covers, finds books by their content, and converts them to plain text. (mehr)

If you want to copy a database to an external drive it’s useful to know which items you have imported and which are just indexed. To find out in DEVONthink Pro or Pro Office, open the Search window (Tools > Search). Leave the query field blank, check Search for: All. Now click the Advanced button and enter these criteria: All of the following are true; Kind is Any Document; Instance is (not) Indexed. Click OK to start the search. (mehr)