Using a PIM to catalog files and folders REDUX

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jul 3, 2012 at 01:10 PM

Here are the applications I’m aware of that (I believe) do what you’re looking for:

TheBrain: You can choose to have either “virtual” folders, which provide links to all the files within a folder outside TheBrain, or you can choose to move those files into TheBrain. If you do this, the files remain in their native format… the advantage is that TheBrain then indexes the contents of the files for fast searches.

Zoot: You can drag files onto any Zoot folder and you get an option to import the file or create a link to it. Depending upon the file type, you have other options for how to handle them within Zoot. Zoot will also optionally try to import text from the linked file into the note area so that it can be found in a search. I have only tried Excel files and PDFs, but this seems to work fairly well.

OneNote: Drag and drop to a OneNote page also gives you the option of creating a link to the original or importing the file directly. If the Word option appeals to you, OneNote might take this one step further, allowing you to annotate your links very easily.

Anyway, those are the ones I’d check out if you haven’t already.

Steve Z.