I have just purchased an upgrade to DevonThink Pro Office and have encountered considerable difficulty in converting my old database (which is not very large, just 1.3GB). On the first attempt the error log showed about 25% of the items as failed–some showing “No Text”, others just “Failed”. I deleted the new database and tried again with no better results. I also find that the application freezes and requires force quit during the upgrade process. I realise the old database is still there and this is fortunate. I suppose I will have to revert for the time being until this is sorted out.
(I am using latest OS X on a new 2.8GHz MacBook Pro, late 2008, so I don’t see any problems. I have also entered the new licence into version 2 because I thought the demo version might be limited in scope).
I had some of the same problems. One workaround for me was to export everything from DT, then do an import with DT2. You lose some stuff, like replicants and duplicates (well, the links at least, I think–the files are still there) but you should be able to maintain your folders and such that way.
The No Text error isn’t such a big deal. The “Failed” error I got numerous times, but it actually appeared to import the files (just messed up the filenames).
If it appears to freeze just give it some more time. The conversion seems to be pretty intensive. Even on my MBP w/ 4GB of RAM and nothing else opened it appears to lockup if you lose focus of the “Importing” dialog box.
Yeah. One complaint I have is that DEVONthink frequently stops responding when handling large tasks (not that I have any idea of how to change this or anything). And on very large tasks it’ll stop responding for a long time…
But it will almost always come through okay in the end if you have enough RAM/swap and hard drive space for the process to complete.
Thanks for the useful info. I’ve tried everything again and kept a record of items exported and imported. The original database exports 4,220 items (which tallies with the individual folder totals within the application).
When I import to version 2 there are only 3,800 items, and, as far as I can tell, 420 have gone walkabout. The problem is that it’s difficult to determine just what has gone, so I cannot rely on this and can foresee problems down the line.
For the time being I have reverted to version 1 with the original database and will await developments. I don’t want to put effort into adding to the database on version 2 if I subsequently find I have lost loads of stuff. Maybe during the week there will be some further news since it is likely others are experiencing similar problems.
I’m having problems with conversions as well. I have 9 separate databases in DTPro 1.5.4 and when I started to import them had several crashes. On the last attempt I noticed that it was stripping filenames off .jpgs – instead of something like “Susie at the beach” I had “L000016”.
I thought of exporting all the data and reimporting it into DTPro 2, but that is waaaay too much work – I can’t afford the time it would take to make sure everything is safely brought in.
I understand the implicit warning in “beta”, but it seems a bit premature to charge for it at this stage. Fortunately, the upgrade price was minimal and I have confidence you will fix this.
After waiting a few weeks I have again attempted to convert my file into Devonthink Pro 2 format. The conversion proceeds, although there is a long list of “failed” items which mostly appear to be email messages. However, on opening the new file I find that most of the filenames which had been allocated by my Fujitsu ScanSnap (for instance 200811101055.pdf have been changed (for instance, 000032.pdf) and there are many duplicates (as far as I can see, pdf files are numbered sequentially within each folder). Also, all the comments attached to these files have been lost.
Closer inspection of the pdf file naming shows that recently imported files have retained their original format. A couple of months ago I changed the ScanSnap filenaming template from 2008_11_10_20_55 to 200811102055 and I am wondering if the conversion to DTP 2 cannot handle the underscores. The filenames are not particularly important, but the accompanying loss of the comment field is a problem.
Would it be possible to have a comment on this from someone at Devon Technologies?
Sorry, folks, as a heavy user of DT Pro Office I’ve converted a number of 1.x databases to 2.0 databases, using DTPO2 pb1. But I’ve simply not experienced problems such as renaming of PDF or image files, or loss of Spotlight comments (although I very rarely use Spotlight comments), or failure to convert a large number of contents of a 1.x database.
As I can’t replicate those problems, I don’t have suggestions about how I avoided them. I’m just a heavy DEVONthink user, not one of the developers.
But Christian, the chief genius architect of DEVONthink, is evaluating user problem reports (some with helpful information about their computer/software environment, etc.).
Although it’s often useful to report and discuss problems on the forums, a report to the developers that includes as much information as possible about a problem that has been encountered can be very useful. For example, name changing of PDF files seems to affect only a relatively few users. The issue, then, is what’s different about those databases, their contents and/or their computer/software environment that may be the cause?
That’s the purpose of a public beta — to look for problems that may appear in the larger user community, that haven’t been encountered in internal testing or testing by the beta test group.
I had another go but this time followed your excellent guide. I verified and rebuilt the old database then exported the items before importing to DTP2. This worked well. Previously I had obviously made the error of trying to open the old file and allowing the export/import procedure to be controlled from the new file. There was still a significant number of import failures but I have verified at least 50 percent of them and find that the files have in fact been transferred. So I am quite happy now and am beginning to see the delights of DTP2. Thanks for all your help.
I had another go but this time followed your excellent guide. I verified and rebuilt the old database then exported the items before importing to DTP2. This worked well. Previously I had obviously made the error of trying to open the old file and allowing the export/import procedure to be controlled from the new file. There was still a significant number of import failures but I have verified at least 50 percent of them and find that the files have in fact been transferred. So I am quite happy now and am beginning to see the delights of DTP2. Thanks for all your help.
