Outlining, DEVONstyle

There are times when making a nice orderly list is necessary. From creating a grocery list to outlining a story idea, they can be just what’s needed to keep things organized. But without a dedicated outliner, isn’t it just too hard to do in DEVONthink? Nope! Here’s how to do it in an RTF file.

1. Open System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Application Shortcuts and add a menu item for DEVONthink.
2. For the Menu Title enter a bullet, “•”.
3. For the shortcut key, press ⌃⌘1 simultaneously. (Control or Control-Command and numbers are fairly open to use.)
4. Now, back in DEVONthink, click in your RTF file to start editing and press the shortcut key and voila! You are making your list.

Now, not everything is bulleted lists, so how can you do this with others? Absolutely! For the Menu Title enter the text as seen in the Lists drop down (the Ruler must be showing Format > Ruler > Show Ruler, or ⇧⌘R) but with two spaces between them. Like this: A.  B.  C.

Now you can type at one level with one format. The after pressing Return and Tab to indent, press the next shortcut key to switch to another format. Pressing Return and Delete, it switches back to the formatting of the previous level.

Note that if you set up a custom format, it will not be available to all documents.