Documents : Document Linking

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Document Linking

Documents in DEVONthink are independent items but often have context relationships with other documents in your databases. Efficiently creating and using these links is key in many peoples' use cases. DEVONthink supports three types of links.

Link Types

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, which are discussed below.

Relative and Absolute Links: Most often used in Markdown documents and also supported in HTML-based formats, these are links similar to what is seen in the source code of web pages; e.g., /stylesheets/styles.css. Note, these are not item links. See the subsection on linking in the Markdown section of this chapter for more information.

Item Links: Many applications today have a URL scheme — a special URL that provides some extra functionality for that application. In DEVONthink, every item has a unique URL, pointing only to that item. When used with in-application documents or in external applications that support URL schemes, the item link will open the linked document in our software. In some cases, the link may even contain certain parameters to do things like open a video to a specific time.

Item links are either incoming and outgoing links. 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 these links will have a special property icon displayed to the right of the filename in the item list. 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.

One of the advantages of using item links is the link title of item links can be updated when you rename a linked document. To do this, enable the Update name of item links automatically options WikiLinks preferences. You can also leave this disabled and use the Tools > Item Links > Update Name of Item Links command to manually update a document. To switch from WikiLinks to item links in a document, use the Tools > Item Links > Convert WikiLinks to Item Links command.

Note: Item links are also discussed in the Automation > Item Links section of this help.

Creating Links

Making links to other documents should be easy to do. However, working within the constraints of certain file formats sometimes requires different methods to create them. Listed below are the most common ways to add links between documents.

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.
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. Item linking methods specific to certain file formats are covered in their respective sections of this 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. This is an efficient way to insert links into rich text or Markdown documents.
Insert Link: Edit > Insert > Item Link opens the Insert Item Link popover, allowing you to add an item link to a document.

Viewing links

View incoming and outgoing links in the Document > Links inspector. You'll also see web links in a document are listed as outgoing links.