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Quick links: |  | View/Edit Pane Navigation Bar Editing Bar Tag Bar Context Menu Items Toolbar Versioning

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DEVONthink is made for documents. It's powerful internal AI, reads, indexes, analyzes, and stores information about each document added to your databases. But it not only provides solid storage and organizational features, it also lets you create certain types of documents directly in a database. While not intending to replace bespoke applications, like Pages, etc., for many people, in many situations, the convenience of integrated document creation makes DEVONthink a central hub for their work and lives. Let's take a quick look at the parts of the interface you'll commonly use when viewing or editing your documents. View/Edit Pane The view/edit pane is where you can see or edit the current document (with compatible files). Whether you're journaling, annotating, planning, or even just reading, this pane is where you'll likely spend a lot of time. Navigation Bar At the top of the view/edit pane, DEVONthink is the Navigation bar with information about the selected document. Which tools are available depends on the type of the document you are viewing. The options below are shown in the Navigation bar for most file types. Specific options are shown in the separate sections throughout this chapter: Navigates back to the last visited document after following a link. Navigates back to the next visited document after going back. Reloads the displayed page in a web view. Only visible for, e.g., bookmarks. Shows an action menu with options for opening the shown page in Safari, copy its address, or capture the page in a variety of formats. Shows if the document is locked or editable. Scrolls to the previous highlight, e.g., a search term occurrence. Scrolls to the next highlight, e.g., a search term occurrence. Scrolls to the next page of the displayed document. Scrolls to the previous page of the displayed document. Switches to Text Alternative mode. Useful for selecting text in uneditable formats, e.g., Word documents. Switches to Best Alternative mode. For Markdown documents, this is the rendered HTML view. Word Count: Shows the number of paragraphs, words, and characters of the displayed text. URL: Shows the URL associated with the displayed item, if one is present. If a PDF annotation is selected the URL field shows the associated URL if available. Click to launch the URL in its default application. Hold the ⌥ Option or the ⌘ Command key to open the URL in a new tab. Holding ⇧⌥ or ⇧⌘ opens the URL in a new tab and selects it. Page Count: Shows the number of pages as well as the page number of the currently displayed page. Click the page number in PDF or PostScript documents and enter a page number to jump directly to that page. Editing Bar For some formats, e.g., rich text or sheets, there is another bar available: the Editing bar. If you click this icon , the editing bar will appear in place of the Navigation bar. This offers quick access to some editing tools related to the file type you're working on. See the appropriate file type section for more info. Tag Bar The Tag bar appears under the view/edit pane and shows all the tags associated with the document. Just click into the bar and start typing. Any potentially matching tags will be suggested. The suggestions come from the current database unless you're in the Global Inbox where suggestions come from all open databases. When you type the name of a tag, DEVONthink offers automatic completion. Choose an existing tag with the mouse or the arrow keys and press ↩ Return or ⌤ Enter to accept it. Press ⎋ Escape to ignore the suggestion. Press ⇥ Tab to enter another tag. You can remove a tag by selecting it and pressing the ⌫ Backspace or ⌦ Delete key to remove it. You can toggle the Tag bar on or off via the Tags toolbar button. If you have multiple items selected, tags will only appear in the Tag bar if all items have all the same tags. However, it's still possible to add tags to all the selected items. Context Menu Items If you Control-click in many types of documents in DEVONthink, you are presented with a context menu showing many options. The options displayed depend on what you're clicking; e.g., selected text, and whether you're in the editing or preview mode. As many of these commands are the same for most formats, we have provided a list in the appendix. Format-specific context menu commands are listed in their respective sections in this chapter. Toolbar In addition to creating documents via the Data > New or Data > New from Template submenus, you can also quickly make new ones via the New button. Versioning As we compose our documents, things happen. We click on the ⌦ Delete key accidentally and wipe out several paragraphs. Or we may stop and wonder if an earlier edit sounded better or made more sense. Enter the Versions inspector, where you can jump back to a document's previous states without having to manually create a separate file on your own. Versions are enabled on a per-database basis in the Database Properties. As you make edits to a document in DEVONthink then save it, a version is preserved. If you need to view or restore a previous state, you'll find them in Versions inspector. Selecting a previous version temporarily changes the contents in the view/edit pane. Restore it, choose another version, or click an empty area in the inspector to revert to the current state. You can also find these commands, and options to remove one or all versions in the context menu. Make sure to open the Files > General settings to set the parameters for your versioning. Versions do consume space in your database so you'll want to make wise choices in the allowable number of versions per document, the maximum size each version can be, and the how long they're kept in the database. This is something you should be especially aware of when using an encrypted database. If you check out the Database Properties for your database, the number of versions isn't included in the various document counts. However, they are listed with their combined space in the database Totals.
Note: Versioning only applies to edits made in DEVONthink, not those made in external applications. Documents are automatically saved every five minutes after the last modification, when deactivating the window, or when quitting DEVONthink. And if it has been less than two minutes between saves, a new version will not be produced.
While every file format has its own strengths (and weaknesses), you can likely find a type suitable for your purposes. Each of the native types, and how DEVONthink handles other file types, are described in the subsequent sections in this chapter.