The future of OneNote

Posted by Amontillado
Apr 29, 2018 at 02:12 PM

I think to get the most out of DevonThink, one must use tags quite a bit.

As I recall, One Note’s tags aren’t hierarchical, and I remember them being cumbersome if you defined too many. That may be unfair of me, but that’s what I recall.

On projects that involve a lot of files or a lot of correspondence, I’ve found it works well to store things in categories that make a sort of top-level sense. A letter from the State Attorney General, for example, will go in the AG’s group, which is within the State group.

When I file it, I add tags for any dialog or fact it pertains to. Each time I review something I’ve stored, I check out the tags to make sure every topic in the letter is represented by a tag.

The tags then become sort of like The Brain’s jump links (the ones that appear to the left of the current topic, if you’re familiar with The Brain).

DevonThink would be perfect if it had a reporting tool. I’d like to define a report much like a smart group or a tag and print the file names, or extract fields by regular expression from the files. File names can be listed, but it’s sort of like a screen print. If DevonThink shortens the filename with ellipses, that’s how it appears when the list of files is printed.