Home | Appendix

Quick links: |  | Navigation Bar Editing Bar and Annotations Contextual menu

|  |  | 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. PDFs often come directly from text sources, like word processing or page layout applications. The content of these files should be indexed and searchable on import. You can also acquire PDFs from scanned documents. These files will only have a text layer if OCR is done on them. PRO For scanned PDFs, you can do OCR directly in DEVONthink when needed. In the Tools menu there are several PDF related commands, including access to Annotation tools (also found in the Navigation bar). Additionally, there are commands for changing the display, e.g., single to two pages, in View > PDF Display. PDF files can be imported. 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. Inspector Panes: There are two inspector panes with information specifically pertaining to PDF documents: the Content Inspector and the Document Inspector. The Content Inspector allows you to see a list of thumbnails or an available table of contents. When this inspector displays the thumbnails, Tools > Split Document and the same contextual menu command becomes available to split the PDF before the current page. The Document Inspector gives you a view of PDF metadata, e.g., keywords, a list of annotations, and a list of links detected in the document. Please refer to the Inspectors chapter for more specifics. 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. Contextual menu In addition to many common contextual 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. Copy Page Link: Copies a URL to the clipboard pointing directly to the shown page of the document. Delete Annotation: Deletes the selected annotations. Previous/Next Page: Jumps to the previous or next page. 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. Split Document: Splits the document before the current page. A new document is created from the preceding pages and removed from the current document. Reverse Page Order: Reverses the page order of the document.