Documents : Document Linking

Document Linking

Documents in DEVONthink are independent items but often have contextual relationships with other documents in your databases. Here are a few ways to make links in the text of editable documents and establish those connections:

WikiLinks: WikiLinks are specialized links found in plain text, rich text, and Markdown documents. Use them to link to existing items or create documents on-the-fly. For existing items, these links are automatically detected depending on the method chosen in the WikiLinks preferences. Note these are not item links.
Make Link: In rich text files, you can select words and choose Format > Make Link to create an active hyperlink of the selected words. Clicking on the hyperlink will generate a new WikiLinked document.
Relative and Absolute Links: Often used in Markdown documents and also supported in HTML-based formats, these are usually links similar to what is seen in the source code of web pages; e.g., /stylesheets/styles.css. These are not item links.
Copy and Paste: Select an item in the item list and choose Copy Item Link. This captures the item's unique link to the clipboard so you can paste it into another document or even another application. Some other types of links can be captured, e.g., page links. Refer to the Contextual menu section for the appropriate file format in the Documents chapter.
Add Link: For text in rich text and formatted notes, you can select words and choose Format > Add Link. You can then add a URL, including an item link, to create an active hyperlink of the selected words.
Drag and Drop: You can Option-Command-drag and drop a file into a compatible document to insert an item link.
Insert Link: Edit > Insert > Item Link opens the Insert Item Link popover, allowing you to add an item link to a document.

Of the methods listed above, the ones utilizing item links are of special note.

Incoming and Outgoing Item Links

Incoming and outgoing links are item links DEVONthink has detected. The two types of links function as sides of one operation. If you create an item link to an image, the file will have an outgoing link detected. The image you have linked to will have an incoming link detected since the file has a link pointing to it.

Documents with incoming or outgoing links will have a special property icon displayed to the right of the filename in the item list. Read more.... You can display a sortable Incoming Item Links and Outgoing Item Links column in the headers of the item list in List view. There also are incoming and outgoing item link criteria usable in toolbar searches, smart groups, smart rules, and AppleScript.

Viewing Links

See the Document > Links section of the Inspectors chapter for information on viewing the links of a document.