I’m long overdue for a more rational organization of files on my laptop’s hard disk, and I’m planning to move and consolidate a good number of files and folders from their present locations. Several of my DEVONthink 3 databases include indexed folders in multiple Finder locations that will change afterwards. (I’ve only indexed Finder folders and their contents, not stray, individual files. The number of total indexed files numbers in the several thousand.)
I want to make sure that the databases are accurately updated/reindexed after I move everything around, and I would appreciate advice re the best practice for doing this. Should I just move/consolidate the folders in Finder, then “Update the Index Items” in each database, and anticipate DT3 will handle the transition cleanly? Of should I first remove the indexed folders from the databases, then move the folders, then re-index the folders into DT3? The second solution is a bit more time-consuming, but might it be more reliable when the changing the indexing of thousands of Finder files? Thanks in advance.
Are you intending to move top-level parent folders or just reorganizing the child folders?
Of should I first remove the indexed folders from the databases, then move the folders, then re-index the folders into DT3?
This would be the most fundamental approach.
Some will be top-level in the databases. Will use the remove/(re)index approach.
This way all the thousands of indexed files will be indexed again and can be searched etc. again in DEVONthink once the moved folders are set to get indexed again, true. But what about annotations to these files, references to them and so forth? Wouldn’t they all get unlinked? Because the moved files although being identical would not be recognized by DEVONthink as the same due to the de- and re-indexing?
@tharpold: @suavito brings up a good point. If you are using annotation files or item links in documents, these will indeed be broken.
Apologies for not being clearer on my previous response.
Thanks, suavito and Bluefrog, this is helpful.
I don’t believe, in my case, that the loss of annotations, etc., to indexed files will be much of a problem. There are few of those kinds of linked connections out from my DT3 databases to indexed files. I mostly use indexing to bring information that is not currently in my DT3 databases into DT3’s search purview. What links there are, are from indexed files into documents stored into the databases, which serve in this situation as repositories of research materials referenced by external documents, scholarly article drafts and the like.
This rational reorg of my hard disk’s contents is, as I suggested before, long overdue. The loss of a small number of existing links out to indexed files is probably worth the increased clarity of file and folder structure overall. This is, I hope, a one-time transition. I’ve gone ahead with the remove/move/reindex process we discussed and things seem to be working well. Added bonus: I’m finding stuff waylaid over the years that I had completely forgotten about 
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