One consequence of my increasingly newspaper - less office — a corresponding gain in the number of PDF files that come in via e - post , that I download from the vane , and that I create myself . I ’ve catch PDFs spread all over my laborious drive , and it ’s getting harder to keep them all in order .
That ’s the job that Ironic Software ’s $ 34Yep 1.6.2 ( ) is here to work . but put , it ’s a file manager specifically project for PDFs , wield those files in much the same way iPhoto manages your photos .
When you first set in motion Yep , it search for every PDF on your Mac . That in itself is not particularly clever . ( Panthera tigris users could easily make a Smart Folder in the Finder that ’d do the same matter . ) But the program then lets you do some clever things with the PDFs it finds .
Cleverest of all : Yep lets you tag your PDFs , seize keywords to each file which you’re able to then use to search , sorting , and manage those file . So , for good example , if you ’ve got a lot of PDFs associated with a given undertaking or node , you could use the project- or client - name as a tag end and then get quick entree to all the associate PDFs .
Yep will also machine - tag your PDFs for you , using ticket you ’ve used in other document , the file ’s home leaflet , contacts from your Address Book , and vulgar “ tatter - like ” words it determine in the data file ( “ study ” or “ personal ” or “ invoice , ” for instance ) . Auto - tagging may exaggerate it a bit , sum up more tags to a file cabinet than you might want , but it is a immediate way to take a first pass at tagging your assemblage .
Once you ’ve done that tagging , you may view your single file in the groovy Tag view : You ’ll see a list of tags in the left - hand sidebar , each one size consort to the act of PDFs that habituate it ( as show on the right ) . you could also export Yep ’s tags asSpotlight metadata(though I wonder why Yep ’s Almighty did n’t just use Spotlight metadata as the default ) .
Tagging makes determination and deal PDFs a lot comfortable . Once you ’ve searched for all the PDFs associated with a project , for example , it ’s a crack to select them all and move them to whatever folder you wish . ( At the same time , you could also use Yep to forego filing all told , opting alternatively to find files using tag and search alone . ) you’re able to look at PDFs in Yep ’s own viewer or in whichever other app you nail down .
In Yep ’s preference , you could designate which folders it should supervise , including your Safari and Mail downloads folders , where PDFs tend to gather up like dust - bunnies . Because Yep depends on Spotlight to feel PDFs , if you ’ve excluded any locations from your Spotlight index finger , they ’ll be excluded from Yep , too . you’re able to also produce smart collection by text , tags , or emplacement . ( It ’d be nice to be able to include date , too . )
If you scan a lot of documents , Yep can also serve as scan managing director ( take over , of class , you keep open those CAT scan as PDFs ) . It endorse TWAIN and ImageCapture , as well as proprietary scanner public utility . The program make believe it simple to combine individual image into multi - page PDFs .
Yep does have its limitation . Unlike Preview or Acrobat Reader , it wo n’t let you comment PDFs . Unlike DevonThink ( ) or Yojimbo ( ) , which also aid you organize the info - bits scattered all over your hard drive , Yep ca n’t manage any file data formatting other than PDFs . And if all you need to do is keep track of all the PDFs on your scheme , you’re able to always just use a smart folder in the Finder .
That said , if you need to process a hatful of PDFs , Yep could be useful . But , with its $ 34 price - tag , you ’d well have alotof PDFs and/or a truly compelling business motive . Otherwise , it ’s in all likelihood overkill for most Mac users .
Yep 1.6.2 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later on ; it ’s a Universal Binary .