Documents : PDFs

Quick links:

Navigation Bar
Editing Bar and Annotations
Context menu
Inspectors
Item Linking

PDFs

PDFs are a very common format, from academia and online bill payments to equipment manuals. Fortunately, they are first-class citizens can be viewed and annotated within DEVONthink. The annotation tools should be familiar and include options like arrows, text, and link annotations. While DEVONthink may not have some options found in specialized PDF applications, it is still a very capable PDF tool.

PDF files can be imported or indexed. They can also be created by capturing web content, directly in DEVONthink or via our browser extension, Clip to DEVONthink. You can also use the PDF Service Save PDF to DEVONthink 3 in the PDF dropdown of the print dialogs of most macOS applications. This will print a paginated PDF to your database. PDFs often come directly from text sources, like word processing or page layout applications. The content of these files should be indexed and searchable when added to your database.

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You can also acquire PDFs from scanned documents. These files will only have a text layer if OCR is done on them. For scanned PDFs without a text layer, you can do OCR directly in DEVONthink when needed.

Viewing PDFs: When you view a PDF it will display as single or two side-by-side pages. Choose the desired option in the View > PDF Display options. When the document opens, the pages are viewed as the entire page or magnified to the width of the view/edit pane. You can choose how the document is displayed in the View > Zoom submenu. If you'd like to always view PDFs with a specific Zoom option, you can set a default in the Files > Multimedia > PDF Display preferences. Enable Automatically resize then choose a single or double page option. The Zoom option used is controlled as shown below:

Continuous: Zoom to Width
Non-Continuous: Zoom to Fit

Navigation Bar

In the navigation bar for PDFs, the number of pages in the document is displayed. Clicking on this navigation bar item opens a Go to page function so you can quickly jump to a specific page. In addition, there are options to move to the first, previous, next, or last page.

Editing Bar and Annotations

The navigation bar for PDF files includes the Editing Bar, providing access to editing and annotation tools. Click this and the editing bar will replace the navigation bar. The tools available here consist of:

Select text for copy or highlighting.
Select annotations on the page. Double-click an annotation to edit its properties. Press the ⌦ Delete key to remove the annotation.
Move or scroll the current page.
Underline selected text in the document.
Strike through selected text in the document.
Apply or remove highlighting on selected text. The highlight color will be the color selected in Format > Highlight Color. Alternately, click and hold to select another color.
Add a link to a selected area. Click and drag over an area to establish a hotspot for the link to be active. For the Link Type, choose Link within PDF, navigate to another page and click Set to create a link between pages within the same PDF. Alternatively, choose URL and enter a URL to an external item. This can be a web site address, or drag files from the Finder or your DEVONthink databases into this field.
Add a rectangle annotation.
Add an oval annotation.
Add a line annotation.
Add a note annotation.
Add a text annotation. Drag to create a text box. To change the font, choose Format > Font > Show Fonts.. Note only one font can apply to each text annotation.
Rotate the current page left (counter-clockwise).
Rotate the current page right (clockwise).
Add a new blank page before the current page.
Delete the current page.
Reverse the page order of the document.

The annotation tools in the editing bar are also available in the Tools > Annotate menu.

Context menu

In addition to many common context menu items there are also a few PDF-specific options:

Automatically Resize: When checked, the zoom factor adjusts to the width of the view/edit pane or document window.
Delete Annotation: Deletes the selected annotations.
Single Page/Two Page (Continuous): Displays the PDF as single or double pages. Use the Continuous option to allow quick scrolling through the pages as one continuous document.
Previous/Next Page: Jumps to the previous or next page.
Rotate Left/Right: Rotates the current page 90 degrees in the selected direction.
Insert Blank Page: Insert a new blank page before the current page.
Delete Page: Delete the current page.
Reverse Page Order: Reverses the order of the pages in the entire document.

Inspectors

There are a few inspector panes with information specifically pertaining to PDF documents: Info > Properties, Content inspectors, and Document > Annotations.

Properties: The Properties inspector displays PDF metadata from some third-party applications, e.g., Adobe Acrobat. This will display things like a title, copyright, author, and keywords, if available.

Content: The Table of Contents inspector displays a PDF's table of contents, if one exists. You can navigate through the document with the section markers in it. The Thumbnails inspector displays page thumbnails of the PDF currently displayed in the view/edit pane. You can navigate via the thumbnails. You can also, drag to rearrange the pages, or even drag them out of the inspector to export them. Alternately, drag other PDFs into the inspector to merge one document into another. Commands for deleting or inserting blank pages are found in the Tools > PDF submenu. And the Split Document command becomes available in the Tools and context menus when you've selected a page thumbnail.

Document: If you are annotating your PDFs, the Document > Annotations inspector is where you can see and manage the document's annotations. Edits made with the annotation tools mentioned above will appear here. You can also selectively delete annotations in this inspector.

Item Linking

In addition to the document's standard item link, PDF documents support these alternative item links:

Page Link: Links to the current page.
Selection Link: Links to selected text.
Annotation Link: Links to a selected annotation.

Alternate item links are available in the context menu in the view/edit pane or the Thumbnails inspector. The alternate links are also accessible when holding the Shift key while viewing the Edit menu.