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 Application Icon The Data Menu
 

The Data menu contains all commands that deal directly with documents or groups. Here you'll find commands for creating new documents, labeling, classifying, or grouping them, and more.


New

New: This sub-menu allows you to create new documents directly from within DEVONthink Personal.

  • With Clipboard: Creates a new document based on the contents of the Clipboard. Note: Some applications such as Microsoft Word put data in mutiple formats into the Clipboard; DEVONthink Personal tries to select the most useful one, however, in some cases, sometimes grabs an image instead of text (like Microsoft Word). Workaround: Create a text clipping for the text, or paste it into a TextEdit window, then copy the text from there.
  • Plain Text: Creates a new plain text document.
  • Rich Text: Creates a new rich text document.
  • Script: Creates a new AppleScript script.
  • HTML Page: Creates a new HTML page.
  • XML File: Creates a new XML document.
  • Property List: Creates a new property list (for developers).
  • Bookmark: Creates a new bookmark. Type the URL you like as well as a name for it; DEVONthink Personal automatically sets the value of its URL field in the Info panel accordingly. If you don't type in a name DEVONthink Personal looks up the page name on the Internet and sets it automatically for you.
  • Group: Create a blank group.
  • Smart Group: Creates a new smart group, also known as 'saved search'. DEVONthink Personal opens the Smart Group Editor that lets you define your search criteria. When saved, the contents of the smart group is updated every time you display its contents.

New from Template: In addition to these standard document types DEVONthink Personal offers pre-defined and user-defined templates that you can use to quickly add new documents to your database. Select any template to add its contents to the current group.

You can add any document to the list of templates using File > Export > as Template.

Some of the pre-defined templates are so-called 'smart templates' or 'template packages'. They consist of folders containing files for every supported language that takes care of choosing the right template variant for your language, adds them to your database, and modifies it, if necessary. Some smart templates add the current date, insert the clipboard contents, check if a needed application is installed, or even access your Address Book and fill in your personal details from your card. [Read more...]


Open

Open: Opens the selected document or group in a separate document window. For groups, this command opens a second main window rooted to the selected group.

Open in Tabs: Opens the selected item in a new tab.

Open with >: Opens the selected documents in the application you choose from the sub-menu. You can edit the document in the external application, DEVONthink Personal automatically synchronizes the file when it is being saved to disk by the other application. If you have quit DEVONthink Personal in the meantime, use File & Synchronize on the document to update it.


Launch, Reveal, Show

Launch URL: Opens the file, folder, or Internet location indicated by the URL field in the Info Panel.

Reveal: Reveals the location of the front-most document in either the same main window, if possible, or by opening a new one.

Show in Finder: Opens a new Finder window for the folder, including the front or selected documents. Naturally, this only works for documents referring to a file in the file system through the Path field in the Info panel.


Save

Save/Save All/Revert To Saved: These commands save the front document, save all documents, or restore the front document to the version that was last saved.


Label and Mark

Label: This sub-menu allows you to mark the selected groups or documents with one of seven labels, just as in the Finder. You can define the color and the text of the labels in the Preferences, Labels tab.

Mark: This sub-menu allows you to mark the item as flagged/unflagged, locked/unlocked, and read/unread. Items marked as unread show an unread marker in most views. [Read more...]


Duplicate

Duplicate: Creates a duplicate of the selected items. The name of the new item ends in 'copy' and both items are shown in bold and blue because their contents are identical.

Replicate: Creates a replicant for the selected items. Unlike a duplicate or alias, a replicant is like a second phone book entry for the same person (aliases are little files containing a link to the original file). When you replicate a group or document in DEVONthink Personal, you end up with two replicants, not one alias and one original. Both items have the same name and are shown in red.

Merge: Creates one big document out of several selected ones. This works not only for text documents, but also for images, PDFs, sheets, and multimedia items. All the original documents are embedded in the resulting document. If the selection contains only images, PDF or PostScript documents DEVONthink Personal generates a PDF file, otherwise a rich text document. Document types than cannot be merged, e.g., bookmarks, are ignored.


Thumbnails and Convert

Thumbnails: These commands create, remove, or update the thumbnails or custom icons for the selected items.

Convert: These commands convert PDFs, sheets, HTML documents, RTF/RTFD documents, text documents, web archives, and all other documents for which a Spotlight meta data importer is available, to plain or rich text or to HTML. DEVONthink Personal never replaces the original document with a text version; instead, it creates a new document containing the extracted text next to the original item. The Convert > To Rich Text option tries to recreate the original layout.


Group

Group/Ungroup: Creates a new group containing all the selected items. This is similar to creating a new group and moving the selected items into it. This command also works in the See Also & Classify drawer. Ungroup does exactly the opposite; it moves all items contained in the selected group one level up and removes the then empty group.

See Also & Classify: Opens or closes the See Also & Classify drawer of a main window.

Auto Classify: This command analyzes the selected documents and tries to find the groups where they would fit best. If a document cannot be classified with certainty, DEVONthink Personal beeps and lists it in the Log panel. If DEVONthink Personal finds more than one fitting group, it creates replicants in all groups the document fits into. This function works best with a large database that is already somewhat accurately structured.

Note: If the document you are auto-classifying has replicants, these are deleted and the document is only placed into the new locations. This prevents multiple replicants from being created when you are, for example, classifying this document again.


Move to Trash

Move to Trash/Move All Instances to Trash: Moves the selected items to the trash. If you have selected a replicated item, Move All Instances to Trash moves this item and all its replicants to the trash.

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