Tagging advice for DEVONThink

Posted by Amontillado
Dec 14, 2017 at 03:23 PM

I’ve been thinking about how to get more out of DEVONThink, particularly in the way that TheBrain organizes stuff.

In TheBrain, there is a hierarchical order. Parent thoughts have child thoughts, and every thought can have jump thoughts, which are sort of sidebar references.

I’ve started using DEVONThink where I use groups and subgroups to file documents in the manner of TheBrain’s hierarchy. Then, I use tags and subtags to do what TheBrain does with jump thoughts.

It’s imperfect, though, because I can’t use a tag to link to a group unless I use one of two methods. I can add tags to groups, but that can only be done in the “get info” window. Unhandy.

Or, I can turn off the “exclude groups from tagging” option in the database properties. That works, but duplication in naming is not well handled. If a group gets named the same thing as an existing tag, the group association, not the pre-existing tag, seems to be what’s active.

I like DEVONThink and it’s been very reliable, much more so in my experience than TheBrain. Just musing about how to get more out of it.

Any suggestions appreciated.