DEVONthink 2.0 uses QuickLook for displaying file formats that it cannot show directly, e.g. Pages, Numbers, or .eml email documents. While this allows DEVONthink to display all files for which a QuickLook plugin is available, many previews don’t allow you to select text, e.g. for copying it. This is where the plain text view comes in. Switch to the plain text view using the plain text view icon in the document’s navigation bar if available. (more)

DEVONthink and DEVONagent, like many other Mac applications, make heavy use of toolbars. The tools give you immediate access to frequently used functions such as for navigation, switching views, creating and deleting items as well as searching. But there are many other tools available for you that you don’t see on a first glance. (more)

When you are looking for specific information on a web page, say email addresses, images, movies, Office documents, or downloadable files, DEVONagent Pro’s Objects Drawer comes in handy. Open any web page in DEVONagent, from a search or directly using File > New Browser, and expand the right-hand sidebar. In the opened sidebar choose the type of information you want to extract, e.g., images, linked binary files, etc. DEVONagent immediately updates the list of found objects for the chosen type. Right-click any object to open it in a separate window, copy its link, or archive it in DEVONthink.

If you want to add additional information to a document in DEVONthink, that’s what the Comment field is made for. You can find it in the info panel that opens with Tools > Show Info or by pressing Command-Shift-I (we didn’t choose Command-I like in the Finder as this would collide with ‘make selected text italic’). Best of all: Comments are searchable.

Dan Byler writes in his blog bylr.net about how to manage information in an information age. Definitely worth reading when you’re an infoworker like we are.

Hugo of Streamlined Mind asks his readers if a paperless life would make you happier:

First of all it’s a good idea to eliminate as much of the incoming paper as possible. Let’s take some time to make a list of all sources of paper sent to us. Bills, obligations and notices, promotional material, things like that. Do we really need them? Do we read all that stuff? […] Do you think you can have a paperless life? (more)

Naming the documents that you put into your DEVONthink database can be a science or even an art in itself. Some prefer to use some systematics, other precede the documents with the current date (something I used to do but have long abandoned) , and even others simply try to describe the contents of the file. For most documents, however, a good name is already there: the headline of the captured article. To quickly rename the document, select the headline or whatever text passage you would like to use, right-click or Control-click, and choose Set Title As from the contextual menu. (more)

If you want to import a batch of scanned PDFs without converting them to searchable PDFs right away, e.g. because you want to run the time-consuming OCR process later, you can easily do so. Import the files, e.g. to a group “To OCR”. Later, make sure to check Preferences > OCR > Original Document > Move to Trash, select all the documents, and convert them in one batch using Data > Convert > To Searchable PDF. This replaces the selected scanned PDFs with searchable copies and deletes the original file in one batch.

If you are searching with DEVONagent Pro you may get results in multiple languages because especially technical terms are often the same in English, German, even French. To avoid confusing both yourself and DEVONagent Pro’s AI with [insert whatever language you don’t understand here] gibberish, use the built-in language filter. Maximize the search window so that the toolbar is visible, then switch to the Settings tab. Select your language of choice from the Language pop-up menu to restrict searched to that language and uncheck Ignore Diacritics if you want to search for words with umlauted or accented characters. This setting is temporary, you can also add this to any search set.

If you like using roman numerals for naming items, you may not be satisfied with Mac OS X’s ability to sort tem correctly. Our power user ‘kalisphoenix’ has posted a nice workaround in our online forum that uses Unicode characters, each one representing one roman numeral. You can easily copy the numerals from the posting and paste it wherever you need them.