Devonian Times Masthead

The DEVONtechnologies Blog

Articles in the category Tips

A Simple Move

December 27, 2016

We had a support ticket with a person who had a simple request: “I have a selection in a Smart Group. How do I move it to a database?” I responded but as I did, I realized (yet again) how much flexibility we have built into DEVONthink. Here are a few ways to accomplish this: … (more)

Search to Organize

December 20, 2016

When you organize your databases and often find yourself navigating through deep group hierarchies to file a new document, this tip from our forum power user korm is for you. (more)

Free Your Menubar with Bartender

December 13, 2016

While we rely on our big powerhouse applications like DEVONthink, there are many smaller utilities we use for specialized purposes. However, this has lead to our menubars becoming increasingly crowded. Especially on a smaller screen, like a MacBook Air’s, this leads to the utilities’ icons being hidden from view. Enter Bartender. (more)

Make Plain Text Pretty with Markdown

December 6, 2016

Plain text is amazing. It’s an incredibly flexible format, offering many benefits, with next to no downside. On the other hand, plain text is… well, ‘plain’. No font changes. No bold or italic. No images. It’s like a world with no picture books. (more)

Use Plain Text Instead of Proprietary Formats

November 29, 2016

Applications like Apple Pages, the venerable Microsoft Word, and similar word processing applications may be full of features, but they are also locking your data up in formats that can only be read by those apps. A great alternative is plain text. (more)

DEVONthink's Synchronization and Network Security

November 22, 2016

When it comes to network safety, many corporations and individuals turn to firewalls and network monitoring applications to control what’s happening. This can keep intrusions at bay, or at least make the life of a potential intruder a bit more difficult. However, these methods can also cause DEVONthink’s synchronization engine to seemingly fail, especially with Bonjour connections. (more)

What the Properties Pane is Useful For

November 15, 2016

A question pertaining to the Properties pane recently came up on our forums. This can be found in DEVONthink with the menu command Tools > Show Properties. It seems to imply it’s a place where you can add things like comments, keywords, authors, etc. to any file. However, this is not true. The Properties pane allows you to view and edit the metadata supported by the file, but does not let you add data to the file which is not supported by the file’s structure. (more)

Clip To DEVONthink — in DEVONthink

October 12, 2016

Many people use the DEVONthink browser extensions to clip information from web pages into their DEVONthink databases. We have extensions (or add-ons, different name but the same thing) for Safari, Google Chrome, and Firefox. (more)

Convert E-Books to PDF

October 5, 2016

ePub and Mobi (the Kindle format) are solid file formats for electronic books. But they are harder to handle than, e.g., PDF or plain text as they are designed for reading on an ebook reader. They are not really suited for using them inside other applications or for long-term archiving. (more)

Print to PDF on iOS

September 22, 2016

iOS 10 comes with a great but somewhat hidden feature: Print to PDF. It allows you to save any document that you can print as a PDF and send it by email or clip it to DEVONthink To Go.

In the Share sheet from any app choose Print. The print preview dialog appears. Now instead of printing “pinch” on the print preview like just as if you’d want to enlarge it. It opens — now as a PDF — in a separate dialog. Choose Share again and send it anywhere you like. (more)