Migrating to DevonThink

June 20, 2013 9:05 AM

Need help migrating to DevonThink Pro with very large, scattered files. Questions on initial organization and workflow.

I am starting to use DevonThink but before I bring in all my archives and files I need your advice. I assume I can keep my database in dropbox.com so I can access material anywhere. Here is the tricky part, should I dump all my files into one massive folder, have DevonThink do the indexing and then categorize in DevonThink or do I need to break everything into files, folders and hierarchies first BEFORE hooking it to DevonThink? I plan to do this using the file>index function.

My natural way of organizing is piling instead of filing. I am also visual, if that is helpful in thinking of anything I maybe missing.

If you have a fabulous workflow with DevonThink and standalone Zotero please share that too.

What has been successful for you?

posted by jadepearl to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Devonthink has amazing search and OCR features... but if your files are very disorganised it is not going to be a magic solution. I really like devonthink... but unless you want to put all your files in one place and rely on search to find what you need - it is not magic - it is not going to organise your pdf/doc files in a way that sense without your help! If you have survived so far I would think hard about disrupting your existing workflow - maybe try putting new documents / academic papers in devonthink or zotero exclusively?
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 10:27 AM on June 20, 2013

I did this for a while with receipts and bills. I had about a year's worth of files which I dumped into one folder in Devonthink, then filed a few into subfolders. Eventually Devonthink got smart enough that it could move them into the folders itself.

However, I eventually found that Devonthink was overkill for what I was doing with it, and moved away from it in favor of tagging things in Evernote. I've found DT's strength is in finding related documents, less so in filing and organizing.
posted by neilbert at 6:27 AM on June 21, 2013

I wrote a trilogy of notes about using DevonThink for history research during my PhD (first post here, all three linked here - I really should get round to making a one-stop page for all of them). (Forgive the self-linking, but you asked!) I've tried both Evernote and DevonThink, and while I totally understand the glory of Evernote, for me, a central part of the act of serious scholarship IS the filing and the categorization - thinking through how you're organizing your material is part of organizing your thoughts on a matter. So I don't really use the DT smart filing system: I prefer to organize my material myself, using heuristics and categories that inevitably, as my thinking develops, change over time. I use my DT database quite differently now to what those posts show (I am planning to write a sequel one of these days!) but that should give you an idea of how one might use it.

You say, however, that your instinct is piling rather than filing, and that you're very visual, both of which make me think you might incline to Evernote instead, or some other way of using DevonThink which better suits you! The great thing about these programs is that they end up reflecting the brain which produces them - so my advice would be to take a look at as many examples as you can find, so you can get a sense of the range of possibilities each program offers, and construct your own personal approach from there.
posted by idlethink at 3:42 AM on July 19, 2013