Introduction

I almost don’t know where to begin. That’s my problem as an author, and it may be your problem as a user, too. DEVONthink is an information management tool with a marvelously deep, rich set of features, and it can adapt itself to just about any set of needs or work preferences. That’s the good news; the bad news is that this wealth of power is like a 50-page restaurant menu in which every dish sounds equally delicious. There are so many excellent choices that finding a clear strategy to make the most of the meal—or the software, as the case may be—can be a daunting prospect.

My goal in this book is to do just that: to help you wrap your brain around DEVONthink’s extensive options and figure out how best to use it to accomplish your goals. Whether you are starting out with the program for the first time or are a seasoned user looking for ways to get more out of it, I hope to show you where to focus, what to try, and how to think about DEVONthink in the most effective way.

DEVONthink already has plenty of good documentation in the form of built-in help files (also available as a stand-alone ebook). The purpose of this book is neither to replace that information nor to explain the operation of every command and button. Rather than create an exhaustive reference, I concentrate on the key tasks you’ll want to accomplish. (That’s why we put “Getting Started with…” in the title!) After providing an overview of the program’s main concepts and interface, I walk you through the principal activities you’ll do over and over, such as getting information into DEVONthink; organizing, finding, and working with that information within the program; and, finally, getting the information back out, by exporting or sharing it.

And if all that leaves you hungry for more, I also provide a bit of dessert—a chapter that goes a bit deeper into some of the program’s advanced capabilities.

Since the second edition of this book was published, DEVONthink has had six major updates, and DEVONtechnologies is constantly working on improving the software. As a result, since the time I wrote this third edition (published when DEVONthink version 2.9.6 was current, and the new sync capability had only recently appeared), any number of things may have changed—new features may have been added, bugs fixed, interface elements rearranged, and so on.

Unfortunately, we can’t update this book as frequently as the software, so you may occasionally encounter something in the book that doesn’t quite match with what you see on your screen. I don’t expect these small inconsistencies to cause you any problems, but I do recommend reading the release notes for each update of DEVONthink you install for details on what’s new. And be sure to access the online Ebook Extras for this ebook in order to check the blog from time to time to see if I’ve added any new information.