My first reaction to your post is: I have a very similar setup (Sync stores on Dropbox, Indexed folders on Dropbox and a few on iCloud) – and I have had similar problems, just not as frequent as you:
- Occasional duplicates in indexed folders
- Search on DTTG doesn’t pick up all docs (in indexed folders) from the Macs.
I have to come to live with it: I accept my two Macs as truths (particularly for searching) and when DTTG finds something as well, I see it as a bonus.
One day I might overhaul my system, trying again to move to local sync (what @BLUEFROG always is advocating for). – I tried it a few years ago without success. (Maybe setup error from my side?) For now I stick to Dropbox for the sync stores. Not perfect, but good enough.
DevonThink is for me – even though I experience these flaws – a fantastic tool!
I felt I owed this thread a follow-through on my status since I said I would try making a setting change. I sat down to work on it this morning. After having done a bit of work on my main computer yesterday, I started DEVONthink on my secondary laptop. That laptop had been sitting around for quite a while (over a day and it wasn’t sleeping), so I believe all cloud files were totally reconciled. I noticed more duplicated files and, for the first time, duplicated groups.
At this point, I really don’t know the status of my sync location or how to clean things up. I’ve decided to stop synchronizing my databases on the secondary laptop. I’m going back to the approach I mentioned in my opening post; I’m going to have separate databases on my secondary laptop and index the cloud locations.
One of my databases contains files, not links to files. I’ll synchronize that one. I don’t expect any problems with it.
I’m going to completely redo my databases on DEVONthink To Go since they also acquired some duplicates. It took many hours to synchronize those databases from Dropbox since I’ve turned off on-demand. I’ve decide to go back to bonjour and just make sure I sync before I leave the house. I might also make a habit of moving things out of the global inbox more quickly since that would allow me to access that content using the Files app, should I forget to do that sync.
I have a question though. What features will I lose by having separate databases? I’m confident that tags will be preserved since the manual is pretty clear that the tags of indexed files are maintained on the files themselves. Also, I won’t be mixing imported with indexed in any database.
I’d say not much unless you’re heavily using replicants as they can’t be made across databases and duplicates are only detected per database.
I have separate databases as I use different tagging schema for different areas (Work DB tags are all about document types e.g. Proposal, WeeklyReport etc. where as My CookBook DB tags are all ingredients. I don’t want cauliflower in my work DB tags 
). I don’t have unify tags on in settings. Having separate databases allows me to choose what I sync where. This is good for saving space on my old creaky iPhone. It took a few goes to get the separation into different logical databases right.
For tags, the draw back is if I have a tag “In Progress” in both my Cookbook and Work DB I will get two “In Progress” tags if I unified tags (which I don’t).
Another consideration is you can only create a replicant within a database, not across them. I don’t use replicants much, so this is not an issue.
PS. I use same CSS styling across all my databases. I found the best place to put the CSS file was in a CSS group in the Global Inbox so it was available independent of what DBs I synced where.
I agree there is not much lost if you CREATE items in different databases.
You do need to be careful if you MOVE items from one database to another.
I have a database for “Active” cases and a database for “Archived” cases. When I move something form Active to Archived, I need to be careful to sync my laptop (and any other synced computers) fairly soon after.
I don’t know the exact timing, but I have found if I move items from one database to another and then at a later date sync my laptop, I wind up with duplicate items sometimes in both databases.
Granted it’s always good practice to keep everything in sync. But this is the only gotcha I have seen when I have negleted to do so at times.
Mind you I have never lost data - indeed never lost any data at all ever with Devontech. But the duplicates sometimes need to be sorted out when I get behind on syncing.
1 Like