Category Archives: Files

Mountain Lion’s mini-revolution: renaming and moving without closing files

Posted on 2012/11/06 by

A nightmare had followed me for decades on both PCs and Mac. I am working on a file and decide that it should be called differently or be placed in a different folder. So I switch to Finder/Explorer, look for … Continue reading →

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Guest post by Ez: Annotating PDFs in Papers, Sente, Skim and other apps

Posted on 2012/10/26 by

Ez responded to the post on annotating pdf in Papers with a comment so useful I reworked it, with Ez’ kind permission, in a separate post. It was prompted by John asking about a “simple workflow”: ‘… [to create] referenced notes … Continue reading →

Posted in Annotation, Bibliographies, Files, Writing | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Removing duplicate reference files with Gemini

Posted on 2012/10/23 by

The best way to find a reference files management system which works for you is trial and error. However, all this trying and erring might leave a messy trail of duplicate files. You end up with more duplicates after sharing your … Continue reading →

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Annotating pdf documents in Papers

Posted on 2012/06/20 by

Until recently, when asked whether Papers provide good annotation tools I would say “not really… but they have other advantages …”. There is no longer need for such an excuse. Papers’ support for document annotation is as good as in their competitor, … Continue reading →

Posted in Annotation, Bibliographies, Files | Tagged | 21 Comments

Openmeta tags, DefaultFolderX and Papers

Posted on 2012/04/08 by

A simple search is usually sufficient to locate a reference in Papers2. It is triggerred from any application by pressing Ctrl-Ctrl and typing search terms (e.g. author’s name or title). This is excellent for citing, emailing or quickly consulting individual … Continue reading →

Posted in Files, Tags and folders | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Papers 2 is here!

Posted on 2012/03/14 by

My earlier post on Papers and Sente said that the biggest disadvantage of Papers is that it does not allow working with bibliographies. This has changed in Papers 2 immediately bridging the gap between pdf file management and scholarly referencing. As a … Continue reading →

Posted in Automation, Bibliographies, Files, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 22 Comments

Managing project files and good old file folders

Posted on 2011/08/08 by

We have just covered naming, storing and locating reference files such as academic articles. There are also completely different files, for example draft papers, project plans, budgets, reports, minutes and contracts. I  handle such ‘project files’ differently from reference files: … Continue reading →

Posted in Files, Projects | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Finding reference files

Posted on 2011/08/06 by

Finding general reference files is less exact and requires more intuition than naming and saving them. The choice of search tools depends primarily upon how much you remember about the file(s) you need to find. If you are lucky to … Continue reading →

Posted in Files | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Revisiting reference files

Posted on 2011/08/05 by

Academics deal with thousands of reference files (text documents, data sheets, images), which are sent by email, downloaded from the Internet, or obtained in other ways. To use MacPowerUsers‘ terms, ‘gathering’ of these files in neat hierarchical folders is not an … Continue reading →

Posted in Automation, Files, Tags and folders | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Tagging

Posted on 2011/03/17 by

Tagging is attaching “tags” or keywords to your files (pdf documents, images, data tables, mail messages, text notes, etc.) which would allow finding them easily. Tagging is a more advanced method of organizing information than sorting it into hierarchical folders. … Continue reading →

Posted in Files, Tags and folders | Tagged , , , , , | 17 Comments