How to Simulate Three Pane View

In version 2 of DEVONthink, there was a view also found in some high-end management or information systems: Three Pane View. This view had a pane displaying only groups and their subgroups, one pane only showing enclosing documents, and a preview pane. However, the ratio of those who were confused by it versus those who liked it leaned toward those not in favor of it. So when we reworked the user interface for DEVONthink 3 we removed it. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to approximate it. Here are some options to make things look a little more like version 2:

• The Navigate pane on the left side of a main window only shows groups by design. This behaves no differently than the group list in Three Pane View.
• Enable View > Show Only Documents and the item list will only show files in group selected in the Navigate pane.
• Set your preferred Preview setting in the View menu: Standard or Widescreen.

If you want to inhibit seeing the groups of other open databases, you can isolate the groups of one database in the Navigate sidebar by disabling Preferences > General > Sidebar > Unify Databases. This will show only the groups of the current database in an active section below the Open Databases section. This allows focusing only on the current database’s groups.

Lastly, you can disable Preferences > General > Sidebar > Unify Inboxes and Unify Tags, if you’d like the Inbox and Tags group to appear within the database’s contents, as they did in DEVONthink 2. These options can be used regardless if you’re trying to recreate the Three Pane View.