Devonian Times Masthead

The DEVONtechnologies Blog

Articles in the category Tips

April 8, 2014

Online Backup with Arq and Amazon S3

Backups are something that every computer user is supposed to do but nobody really enjoys doing it. Apple’s Time Machine makes it a lot easier, at least when you have a second hard disk or a Time Capsule. However, if you’re like me and you don’t want to clutter your desk with yet another piece of hardware you might like Haystack Software’s Arq. (more)

February 18, 2014

Move Items with the Keyboard

It’s very easy in DEVONthink Pro and Pro Office to move documents and groups from one place to another using the mouse. Dragging items between databases can be cumbersome if you have only one window open but then there’s still the Groups & Tags panel. (more)

February 11, 2014

Search for File Types in DEVONthink

Using the advanced search or smart groups you can filter out almost anything from your accumulated knowledge in DEVONthink. Out of the box you can e.g. get a list of all PDF documents in your database, or of all images. The selection here is not very granular, though. But you can easily locate documents using their file name. To find documents of a type not genuinely known to DEVONthink, say like Excel files, choose Filename ends in … xlsx. While the title of a document doesn’t show the file name extension that OS X needs to identify its type, the file name on your hard drive does.

February 4, 2014

* is Wild — Wildcards in DEVONthink

In DEVONthink and DEVONnote you have the ability to use use wildcards in a search term to do partial string matches. We hope this tip gives you some better ideas about how you can use wildcards to help your searches be more productive. (more)

January 28, 2014

Dealing with Duplicates in DEVONthink

Duplicates in DEVONthink are great when you need them, not so great when you don’t. But how to track them down and get rid of them?

In your database you will find a built-in smart group, a purple folder with a gear icon on it, called Duplicates. Selecting this folder will show you the files that are duplicated. (Depending on your settings in Preferences > General, duplicate files may be shown in blue.) So how do you manage them? (more)

January 21, 2014

Connect to Server, XMenu-Style

If you find yourself needing to mount remote volumes fairly often, here’s handy way to do it from XMenu’s User-Defined menu instead of littering your Desktop with aliases.

First things first… in XMenu’s Preferences, you’ll need the User-Defined menu On. Also, you’ll need to mount a remote volume or machine and ideally be showing drive icons on your desktop. (more)

January 14, 2014

Outlining, DEVONstyle

There are times when making a nice orderly list is necessary. From creating a grocery list to outlining a story idea, they can be just what’s needed to keep things organized. But without a dedicated outliner, isn’t it just too hard to do in DEVONthink? Nope! Here’s how to do it in an RTF file. (more)

January 7, 2014

Code Snippets, XMenu-Style

Sometimes writing AppleScripts is monotonous. You end up typing the same thing over and over again. To this end we can buy a snippet organizer or we could use XMenu to assist. Here are two ideas to speed things up: … (more)

December 17, 2013

Organize your XMenu

You may not really think about it, but under-the-hood of each XMenu icon is a simple Finder folder. This means you can create subfolders within these folders to help organize the menu contents. (more)

October 29, 2013

Labels with Keyboard Shortcuts

This tip comes from a question on our Facebook page: ‘Hi Guys, is it possible to assign an keyboard shortcut to a label? For example: If I press ⌘1 the first label is assigned to the current list entry?’ (Thanks, Christoph Jeschke!). Yes it is! Here’s the step-by-step… … (more)