Advice on how to wrangle an indexing database, please

DEVONthink
1

Hi …

I’ve just noticed that one of a database I’d set up to index a root folder on my Mac isn’t seeing new folders I’ve created in the root folder.

I’m an Obsidian user and I have an Obsidian database which (should) index all of the Obsidian vaults (folders) in the root folder I’d originally configured. It was working but today, when demonstrating to a colleague, I noticed I’m missing a couple of newly created vaults.

What should I do to (a) recreate the indexed root Obsidian folder, containing the vault folders; and (b) prevent the DB from becoming out of sync again?

Thanks in advance.

2

To update the not updated indexed items, with the offending folder selected, File → Update Items, or Option-Command-S.

I think you cannot avoid if macOS does not sends the file changed notifications. Doing a Windows (restart all) should help, but not always.

3

And are your Obsidian vaults in Dropbox or iCloud Drive?

4

Nope.

They’re in the [USER] folder.

5

Thanks, but that didn’t work.

6

If I delete the database, and create a new indexed one, will that overcome the issue?

And how do I tell if this DB is one that indexes? I don’t want to risk deleting my Obsidian files.

7

How can you tell it did not work? Log? Other?

What @rfog suggested should work as that is what is documented and what works.

If you feel you need to re-do this, you can delete the index in the existing DEVONthink database or as you prefer to create a new database without deleting the one you have issues with. Make sure you are pointing to the correct Obsidian folder(s)/vault(s).

Just curious. Why do you need the Obsidian files indexed in DEVONthink when they are already indexed by Obsidian in Obsidian? What are you trying to do?

Edit: You may want to re-read the section “IMPORTING & INDEXING” in the DEVONthink Manual also same content in DEVONthink Help.

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8

A database can contain indexed folders/files, it’s not the database itself that is considered indexed.

You look at the contents of the database.
In the item list, indexed files and folders all have a little Finder icon.

Go to the database root, open the info filter (Tools > Filter > Info) and set “File Status” to “Indexed”. Now you’ll see only indexed items + any non-indexed
parents containing them. (The filter shows the full hierarchy of filtered items).

File > Update indexed items should work, so maybe you haven’t indexed the right parent folder. A screenshot or two might help.

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9

If I delete the database, and create a new indexed one, will that overcome the issue?
And how do I tell if this DB is one that indexes? I don’t want to risk deleting my Obsidian files.

If you delete a database, its has no effect on the files in the Finder.

10

But if your database does also contain imported files, those will be gone. But you probably have a current backup from which you could restore the database if something goes wrong.

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