adding Bookends to an existing PDF folder structure

[MichiganUser]

Hi all -

With apologies for what feels like a very dumb question... I have been through tutorial videos and the online guide and the forum and cannot find instructions for my situation.

Briefly: I have a very large "PDF Library" folder in my Finder, which contains several thousand PDFs and a reasonably deep subfolder hierarchy. That entire PDF Library folder is currently indexed in various DevonThink databases. I'd like to start using Bookends to manage the process of tracking bibliographic/publication information. This post (viewtopic.php?p=23962#p23962) in the Bookends forum suggests that I should be able to make Bookends sort of "sit on top of" my existing PDF folder, rather than requiring me to put all of my PDFs into a new folder structure (like Zotero). And that would let me use Bookends while also using DevonThink to interface with the same folders.

Here's what I can't figure out: How do I get Bookends to chew through the *existing* PDFs in my "PDF Library" folder once I set that Finder folder as my root Bookends Library? I get that when I drag a *new* PDF into my "PDF Library" folder, Bookends will process it. But how can I get Bookends to process all of my many *existing* PDFs to get the advantages of automatic metadata etc etc.

Sorry again for not being able to figure this out on my own,
MichiganUser

[Jon]

It's a big ask, but you can drop multiple PDFs on Bookends at once and it will try to fetch the metadata if it can (requires a DOI in the PDF that Bookends can resolve). I'd start with a fresh empty Bookends library and do this in small batches, not thousands at once. Try 5-10 at first and see how that goes, and maybe work up to larger groups like 50-100 if it goes well.

When asked, tell Bookends to NOT move the PDFs to the default folder, leave them where they are in the DT hierarchy.

Finally, in Bookends Preferences, set the default attachment folder to your top PDF folder (the one with the subfolders).

Jon
Sonny Software

[MichiganUser]

Got it -- super helpful. Thank you so much!