I accomplished that. Why are the individual groups all displaying as part of the Inbox?
Aaaah, that was me not seeing the woodā¦ I see now that you have subgroups in your inbox.
I was just going to ask you that; was that previously not the case (i.e. before this whole shenanigans started)?
No, I donāt believe it was.
Ok; you can actually drag and drop a group from the inbox of your database to the root of your database. Iād do it group by group personally (although it would probably be ok to do it all in one go).
Before you do that, though - are the same groups also present in the database (outside of the inbox)? If so, are they empty?
No. Only in the Inbox. And the count has swelled to 17000.
The count of what? Would you be at liberty at all to post an image which shows the structure of your database in more detail? A screen shot of the database properties would be useful regardless.
Ok, thatās one cool database 
Honestly, I can only guess that you had everything selected and hit the delete button; that is the only way I can imagine the whole database ending up in trash, but remaining within the predefined structure. You then dragged the whole lot back out of the trash, but inadvertently dropped it in the inbox rather than in the root of the database. Well, thatās my theory anyway. It is nothing more than that - you can pick it apart, and it may even be helpful if you do so.
Anyway, you can drag the contents of the inbox into the root of the database. At 1,769 groups you wonāt be doing that one at a time, so go the whole hog. I would make a backup of the database first; Iāve never had trouble moving data within a database, but problems have previously been described moving that amount of data between databases (which is quite different to moving it within the same database, which doesnāt actually move it at all. In fact, if my theory is correct, the data has not moved at all on your disk since this started; the only things that have changed are the pointers in the database).
Need help with 3 things:
Best way to backup database.
Understanding why the number of groups has dramatically increased
By root of the database do you mean the name that shows under Open Databases?
This was easier when I was younger.
If the Inboxes and Tags arenāt unified, the view would be similar to what was shown in DEVONthink 2.x, with the Inbox and Tags in the databases in Open Databases.
For the purpose of this exercise, close your database, in Finder open Databases (which is in your user folder) and simply make a copy of the file called DEVONthink 2.dtbase2; put that copy somewhere else (like in the Documents folder in Finder). You can now reopen the database as you would always do. Do not open the database copy.
Long term you need a more complex solution to backing up. There are numerous threads on backing up; using TimeMachine may be the easiest solution.
Has it? I donāt think there is any way I can answer that question without seeing the structure of the database; I had worried that you may have duplicated the contents of the database, possibly several times over, but the database properties suggest that is not the case. If you are sure the number has increased, and canāt figure out what has changed, but at the same time cannot post details on the contents of the database, you may be better off with a support ticket (which would at least allow you to discuss things in a closed forum with Jim rather than out in the open on the public forum).
Correct; anything you drag and drop onto that name will end up in the root of the database.
Tell me about itā¦ I prided myself with keeping up for a long time, but Iāve lost. Not to worry
Iāve opened a bug report. Thanks to all who have tried to help.
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