Can't find (working) DT database

The best thing is to just backup your whole harddrive.

If you want additional backups of just your database(s), it is useful to know their location in the file system. As mentioned ealier, you can just right click on a database and choose Show in Finder. Doesn’t this work for you?

Either way… In the Getting Started chapter of the manual, under A Word About Backups:

As a secondary backup option, you can create an optimized and compressed copy of the whole database that you can then save on a server or other media. Use File > Export > Database Archive or Scripts > Export > Daily Backup Archive to create a ZIP file of the database. The former option allows you to choose specific place; the latter creates it in a Backup folder in your home folder.

You could also use the File > Export option. The only difference is that the script names the zip archive and place it in a predefined location.

But I don’t understand why you have a problem with the script. Something strange is going on. When I open it in Script Editor, I indeed see this line:

set this_archive to "~/Backup/" & this_name & " " & this_date & ".dtBase2.zip"

So why would it create the zip archive in your Application Support folder?

I don’t have it set up to run automatically, but if you search the forum or the manual, there is surely a way to automate running this script.

There is already a long thread on backups here – with discussion on that, plus many other things:

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Thanks for your persistence troejgaard but it’s time for me to abandon, I’m going backwards now. I still don’t know for sure where my data file is, but apparently now there are more than one of them and they are all open and can’t be closed. Inside DT there are multiple copies of tags etc. I suspect this is because the file is within the Library.
Anyway, I’ve used File > Export > Database archive to make a backup zip, now I’m going to delete everything to do with Devon from my computer.
Maybe I’ll return to it. If I do, I assume I can unzip the archive in a suitable location and open it, perhaps from within DT?The manual appears silent on restoring.
Thanks anyway.

A screen capture of what you’re looking at would be helpful.

Hold the Option key and choose Help > Report bug to start a support ticket.

Hold your horses! I don’t see why it is necessary to “delete everything to do with Devon from my computer”. It is still not clear if there is actually any unexpected behaviour, or if you have fundamentally misunderstood some things.

I don’t think the zip archive includes indexed files, only their database record/metadata. Have you indexed any files? If so, be careful that you only remove them from your database and don’t delete them from the file system.

Otherwise you should be able to unzip and continue later, yes.

Could you please share some screenshots?

It is really not clear what you are describing here. What “data file”, do you mean database?

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Hi. Thanks. Here’s a link to PDF with screenshots.

Hi Bluefrog
Option Help > Report bug results in a request for DT to access Mail app and all its data. That’s a very high level exposure of confidential personal and client information, way more than enough to start a deep fake or identity theft. Why would DT need such access before I can lodge a ticket?

It doesn’t, it’s just a default warning of macOS due to DEVONthink trying to script Apple Mail (as that’s the only possibility to create a bug report with attached files).

You’re overstating the danger there. DEVONthink needs to be allowed to talk with the application to generate the email and attach the logs. This behavior has been allowed for a very long time, not only for DEVONthink but for many applications. Apple just makes you jump through all kinds of hoops now.

Similarly, if you haven’t already, you should be allowing DEVONthink Full Disk Access in System Settings > Privacy & Security. Again, normal routine access DEVONthink has had for years and years, only now made scary and difficult by Apple.

PS: The bug reporting process provides important information and logs so we can more effectively assess and troubleshoot deeper issues. And logically, anything sent to us stays within our hands and is completely private.

PPS: Looking at your PDF linked above, you should not have copied the Inbox to another location, nor should you have opened it as it will conflict with the existing Inbox.

Hi Michael

Thank you for taking the time. I get that this all seems pretty incomprehensible to you, and if you don’t have the mental bandwidth, that’s totally fine. I won’t force you! But I think I can quickly dispel your confusion :slightly_smiling_face:

While the screenshots are not really what I was looking for, the two you included in the PDF and your extra description does give me a clearer picture of what is going on—and what you don’t understand. I was hoping you would show the duplicates. But you couldn’t recreate the situation, that’s okay. It would be good to show the full application window next time, though. At least the full sidebar to the left.


First: It seems you have never created a database! Do you see the section: “Open Databases” in the Sidebar? It looks like there is nothing there.

Instead you seem to think DEVONthink itself is the database, or that there is just “the database”. This fundamental misunderstanding leads to a lot of confusion. With DEVONthink, you can create one or many databases for different purposes.

I was a bit confused when you wrote “all mailboxes and tags in duplicate”. Because DEVONthink can also import email mailboxes :wink: But you must be referring to this icon:

sidebar_icon_large-inbox@2x

That icon means “Inbox”. (It has nothing to do with mail.)

This icon means “Database”:

sidebar_icon_large-database@2x

An inbox is not a database. Each database has its own inbox, which is a Group (think of it as a Folder for now, to not complicate things more) intended as a temporary place to store files/documents before you sort them further. Well, an inbox.

There is one exception: the “Global Inbox”, which is what you are confused about here. This is technically a database, but it is a special database created by DEVONthink to use for incoming files. Since you never created a database, it is all you see. You are supposed to create one or more “real” databases yourself! You then either import files directly to a proper database (in its own inbox or a more specific group), or you store them in the Global Inbox while you decide where they fit.

The Global Inbox is necessary for DEVONthink to work, and you cannot close it (explained later) or delete it. And you should not move it. Instead, create another database and put your files there.

The duplicates and triplicates makes sense now: You can’t close the Global Inbox. But you copied the Global Inbox and opened an identical copy of it (or two).

Each database also has its own list of tags—because you probably want to use different tags in different databases. So the tags were “duplicated” as well, when you opened a copy of your Global Inbox.

I hope that clears up the mystery!

You create a database either from the Menu bar by choosing File > New Database, or from the list of options when you click the little plus icon in the lower left corner of the Sidebar. I suggest you put your database(s) in ~/Databases — that is, a “Databases” folder in your “Home” directory. (Not in Dropbox – I will get to that in a moment.) After you create it, it should automatically open and be listed in your “Open Databases”. You can start with just one database while you learn the program. Or you can make a “Work” database and a “Home” database. Or whatever makes sense to you, I don’t know what you intend to use DEVONthink for.

This is a snapshot of my sidebar as an example:

You see how I have the “Global Inbox” in the “Globals” section? (1) And then two “Open Databases”: “Feeds” and “Junk Drawer” (2). The currently selected database, marked with *, is displayed in the section below (3). This section shows the groups in the selected database.

Notice there is an “Inbox” at the top of my selected database! And below that, “Tags”. In DEVONthink’s settings you can choose if you want it displayed like this, under General > Interface > Sidebar . The default is “Unify inboxes” and “Unify tags”. In that case, the inbox and tag list for each database is displayed in the “Globals” section of the sidebar, like this:

2024-11-01 unified inboxes and tags

This is the default because it makes it easy to access inboxes and tags across all open databases, no matter what database you currently have selected. I personally like to display them more seperate like you see in the previous screenshot. Maybe you would find that less confusing? (The “Globals” section must be where you suddenly saw 2 or 3 “Global Inbox”.)

Below what I have highlighted is the section “Recent Databases” which shows my most recently opened databases. They are all closed, but I can quickly open them again from here. I have collapsed the last two sections, “Smart Groups” and Smart Rules". The sidebar quickly becomes long if you expand everything.

Closing a database

You write:

DT then told me I already had a copy of the DB open. I did not, the old copy as closed.

This looks like another basic misunderstanding. Closing the application window does not closes any database. You can actually have many windows open, all displaying the same database. Quitting DEVONthink does close all databases, since the application is no longer running. But the Global Inbox is always open when DEVONthink is running. So even if you quit the application, you get that message when you try to open a copy of your Global Inbox.

When you want to close a database, you can do that through the Menu bar: File > Close Database > [List of open databases, choose one], or by right-clicking a database in the Open Databases section of the sidebar, and choosing Close Database.


Finally, Dropbox…

You write:

I have a folder called Dropbox on my local hard drive which is backed up to Dropbox. Does that still count as a Dropbox folder?

Yes. And it is not a backup! Dropbox is first and foremost about sync. It started as a way to sync files and folders between two or more machines, and easily share and collaborate on files/folders. Now, Dropbox is a business, so along the way they have added other office-like tools to compete with Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive and so. I haven’t followed the details here.

Maybe you think of your Dropbox folder as a backup because it “lives in the cloud”, on their servers. But it is for synchronizing files. If you delete a file in your Dropbox folder by accident, it is gone. How is that a backup? You can choose to “eject” a file to save space on your hard drive and only download it locally when you need it. It just leaves a small alias. But you can still easily delete that, and the same applies—then it is gone everywhere, because it is for synchronizing. It is not a real, proper backup.

But as I briefly mentioned earlier, someone else noted that Dropbox recently launched a dedicated Backup service. I assume you know if you are using it—so that means you are not. If you go to dropbox.com and open their list of products, you will see that “Dropbox” and “Backup” are two separate things. I don’t know the technical details of their backup service.

You should never put your DEVONthink databases in a cloud folder, whether that is Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive, Google Drive or something else. Their server backend doesn’t work like the macOS file system, and it will mess up your database. You can use some of them to sync your databases to other devices, but you don’t do that by placing your database in the cloud folder. DEVONthink has a sophisticated built-in sync function to facilitate this.


I really think everything would seem much easier for you if you read the Getting Started chapter in the manual. It is not that long: 15 pages, including images, with generous line spacing. The language is pretty clear, it is not an overly complicated technical piece of writing.

If you type: x-devonthink://show-help#gettingstarted-simplified in you browser and press enter, that should take you directly to DEVONthink Simplified in the built-in Help. I don’t like reading more than a few sentences in that window, so I suggest you download it as PDF or Epub, which you can do here. Then you can also highlight, take notes, or mark something if you are not sure what it means and want to ask for clarification in the forum.

If you are not sure what an icon means, there is a list with explanations in Appendix > Iconology (x-devonthink://show-help#appendix-icons).


Damn. I did not intend to write this much… I tried to be concise, but I wanted to spell things out and not assume much technical knowledge. I hope it helps.

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I will add one more thing that just occured to me, since I don’t know how familiar you are with macOS.

It is not clear to everyone that you can collapse and expand sections in the sidebar like I mention above. You need to hover your mouse over a section title for the interactive element to appear: a small arrow, at the right edge of the sidebar.

If one of the sections in your sidebar look empty, check if it is just collapsed.

(I suspect your duplicate "Global Inbox"es were actually listed in the “Open Databases” section, but that it was collapsed.)

expand-sidebar-sections

You can do the same in Finder, Apple Mail, and many other apps that use the standard sidebar interface.

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Thanks again. Here’s an update file with screenshots.
More on DevonThink dtabases.pdf (416.9 KB)
Subsequent to the above, by closing/quitting/opening direct from the DB I now have DT reporting via File > Database properties that the database is at user > databases, not Library.
So I dragged the mailboxes (whatever the storage folders might be called in DT) from Global to the Writing DB and things are looking much better. I no longer have a .dtbase2 in Library.
But I still have 2 x tag sets called Writing and 2 x Inboxes called writing.
Screenshot 2024-11-03 at 4.05.48 pm.pdf (845.3 KB)

Michael: open DEVONthink’s settings, go to General > Interface, and disable Unify inboxes and Unify tags. Then the only things shown in the “Globals” section will be the Global Inbox and the Trash. I’m sure this will make it easier to see what is going on.

This screenshot you sent explains it:

At some point previously, instead of creating a new database, you edited the database properties of your Global Inbox and changed the Name to “Writing”. If you look at the file path at the top of the properties window, it is still called Inbox.dtBase2 in the macOS file system. The Global Inbox is always supposed to live in the Application Support folder with the filename Inbox.dtBase2, so even if you change its Name in the database properties, it doesn’t change the filename in macOS. It is special. But you do see the changed Name inside DEVONthink.

So in the “Globals” section you now have your Global Inbox, but displayed with the name “Writing”. And then you have the inbox for your newly created “Writing” database. It is greyed out in this screenshot because it is empty. The same with the tags.

For other databases than the Global Inbox, when you change the Name in the database properties, the filename of the .dtBase2 does change. But Name in DEVONthink and filename in the file system is not the same. (Because DEVONthink allows you to use characters in the Name that are forbidden in filenames, for example :. And it allows you to have multiple files with the exact same Name side by side, also impossible in the file system.)

When you disable Unify inboxes and Unify tags this should be confirmed. You will only have one inbox in the Globals section, but it will be called “Writing”. It will have a list of tags inside it. In the “Open Databases”, you will have a database named “Writing”, and it will have it’s own inbox and tags listed there, inside it. This way you can see what belongs where, even if they have the same name. Right click the one in “Globals”, open the database properties, and change the name back to “Global Inbox”.


About Dropbox – look, I don’t have enough technical knowledge to fully understand and explain the details. But the developers have stated again and again, and written clearly in the official manual, that you should never put your database in a cloud folder. I just accept that, since I don’t want to risk anything. A compressed version in a zip archive is okay as a kind of backup. But not a database you work from.

The passage you quote from Kissel’s book might be ambiguous in isolation. But as you note it is from the chapter on sync. He is not talking about placing your .dtBase2 file in a Dropbox folder, but about adding Dropbox as a “Sync Location” in DEVONthink’s built-in Sync interface. This is clear if you read more of the chapter.

In the beginning of the same chapter he writes:

As I explained in How and Where Databases Are Stored, even though DEVONthink stores all your documents as individual files on disk, it also keeps a great deal of information in a proprietary database; the database and the files together are kept in a package—a folder that looks like a single file. Because of the way databases work, syncing is tricky and dangerous if you try to do it outside DEVONthink (for example, by using a sync app such as ChronoSync to sync files over your local network, or by storing your database in a folder that syncs via a cloud service).


The “other” Inbox in you Application Support folder is not suspicious. You will see it looks different, it is not a database. It is a kind of alias that is used to save files directly to you Global Inbox from system save dialogs, or that can be added to the Finder sidebar to drag & drop files onto. It lets you add files to DEVONthink even when the application is not running.

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Please try to use the correct terms. It makes it more difficult to understand you and help if we don’t use the same terms. I’m just a person spending my own time trying to help you, and I am putting in a little effort if you can’t tell. You refer to “Library” a couple of times, and for a while I thought you meant the ~Library folder in the file system. But it makes more sense if you are talking about the Sidebar. DEVONthink has no “Library”. Here I assume you are talking about Groups.

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Yes, I know and appreciate the time you are putting in, thank you, By “library” I mean HD > Users > Me > Library as a location that files might be in, such as Inbox.dtBase2 which was originally located there.
I have reviewed my latest doc “More on DevonThink dtbases” an as far as I can see I have been absolutely consistent in this usage.
Working on the other suggestions, thanks.

I’m sorry to hear you’re struggling with these concepts, but I think part of the issues is you are making many assumptions about the situation, what things are, and how things are supposed to be. DEVONthink is no harder to use than the Finder. (And that’s not hyperbole). Also, we have provided many resources outside these forums that clarifies terminology and best practices, more resources than many other companies provide.

As @troejgaard noted, the Getting Started chapter of the built-in Help and manual is a good resource. Even if it’s merely the DEVONthink Simplified section, much is made very clear about what things are and what they’re called.

And from the very next subsection, Building Your Database

Also, there are many visual cognates in our interface. For example…

  • The Globals section is similar to the Favorites section of Apple Mail’s sidebar, where the Inboxes, Trash, etc. of all active email accounts are shown.
  • DEVONthink’s Favorites section is like the Favorites in a Finder window’s sidebar.
  • The item list functions like a Finder window, including supporting views, like List and Icon.
  • Creating smart groups is similar to creating smart folders in the Finder, including support for subcriteria.
  • etc.

So there isn’t this need to learn all new things in DEVONthink. But there are some DEVONthink-specific things you need to consider, as DEVONthink is not the Finder, nor Apple Mail, nor any other application.

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You know what, my bad. You have been pretty consistent about “Library” (using it as a shorthand for ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink 3). I just got confused when you said this:

… because there should always be an Inbox.dtBase2 in that location. I guess you you are looking at the database properties of your Writing.dtBase2 when you say this?

(And as I said earlier, you can import email mailboxes to DEVONthink, so it’s best not to use the term “mailbox” unless it actually applies.)

@BLUEFROG , Michael says he has already read in both the manual and Kissel’s Take Control of DEVONthink3.

Anyways, I hope my recent reply helps clear up what is going on with the Global Inbox. I can see how it could be confusing if you were not aware that you renamed it. If you disable the Unify inboxes setting, you can be sure that the only inbox in the Globals section is the Global Inbox, even if its name says something else.

Edit: Just in case, these are the settings I’m talking about.

From looking at your screenshot, I guess Unify databases is also enabled by default. But that doesn’t matter for this, leave it on if you like.