DEVONthink's Content Inspectors for PDFs

The Content inspectors in DEVONthink 4 are especially useful for PDFs, as they provide an overview of the document. You get thumbnails of the individual pages and, if the document contains this information, a table of contents. However, these inspectors offer more functionality, as you can customize a PDF’s outline.

Select a PDF document and choose Tools > Inspectors > Content: Table of Contents. This table of contents lets you easily navigate the sections of the document. However, with DEVONthink 4 you can now modify the table of contents. Select a section you don’t need to see in the outline, press the Delete key (⌫), and it’s removed. Select a page or section you return to often, then drag and drop it to the top of the outline or organize it in whatever way suits your needs. The page numbers will be retained when you organize. And a small option you may like, is to use the Show/Hide Page Number in the context menu to toggle the page numbers on or off.

Now switch to the Thumbnails inspector. Navigate to a page of interest and Control-click the thumbnail. Choose Add to Table of Contents to add a new bookmark to that page. Switching back to the Table of Contents inspector, you’ll see the new item at the bottom named after the page number. Select the new bookmark and press the Return key (⏎) to rename it or Control-click it and choose Rename…. Now you can create your own custom table of contents in a PDF, even if it currently has none.

Be aware, these changes are not modifying the content of the PDF document. You are only modifying the table of contents itself. And the modified table of contents also works in the PDF’s outline view in DEVONthink To Go!