Teaching Workflow Example: Email to DevonThink

I suppose one of the reasons that it’s easy to have a full inbox is because there might just be that good article that’s worth saving for a class or another reason. So what do I do when finding such articles? My new answer: save them to DevonThink and my database for that class.

Just today, for example, I happened upon one of the New York Times newsletters, OnTech. Their lead question: will streaming save sports or kill it? Sounds like a good question for a Media Literacy class. So what to do? Save it in my DevonThink media literacy database so I can use it later. Here’s how I do that:

In Outlook, I have the email message. Then File/Print, but here’s where I make an adjustment:

The screen that results from printing an email in Outlook. The page previews are on the left hand column, and the Microsoft Office dialog boxes are on the right. I've selected the PDF dropdown on the bottom that shows a menu of different applications that can receive the PDF file.
Microsoft Outlook 365 for Mac print dialog box.

Here, I selected the PDF drop-down box on the bottom. I have several options of what to do with the PDF that’s generated by Mac OS. The one I want is “Save PDF to DEVONthink 3.” When I do that, DEVONThink opens and I get this screen:

DEVONThink screen showing all my open databases on the left, and a quick preview of the PDF on the right. The PDF is being inserted into the global inbox.
DevonThink 3 screen that opens when I send the Outlook email to DevonThink as a PDF. Note that the file automatically goes in the general Inbox.

The nice thing about DEVONThink Pro is that it has OCR, so it will convert the PDF into a searchable PDF, which then will allow me to search on any term.[1]As I mentioned elsewhere on my site, this is the main reason to prefer DEVONThink Pro to the normal version.

And given that the textbook I’m thinking about using has a heavy dose of convergence to it [2]Joseph Turow’s Media Today, 7th edition. Unfortunately, the 8th edition is coming out during week 6 of the semester. Ugh. But it’s cheaper than the other book I have used, and suits my … Continue reading, this article makes perfect sense to keep on hand to use.

Notes

Notes
↑1 As I mentioned elsewhere on my site, this is the main reason to prefer DEVONThink Pro to the normal version.
↑2 Joseph Turow’s Media Today, 7th edition. Unfortunately, the 8th edition is coming out during week 6 of the semester. Ugh. But it’s cheaper than the other book I have used, and suits my approach to the class a bit more. It keeps the historical pieces that I think are important, but not as much as I’d like. Then again, the perfect book would be 1,000 pages long and nobody would read it!