Ghost files in indexed Dropbox folders with a "File not yet available" message

I have a database containing a lot of indexed Dropbox material. (I try to index one high-level folder with subfolders, rather than individual folders or files.) The database is synced between two computers with copies of DT4 (Server edition). The Dropbox account and folders are shared between the computers too.

A few days ago, on my office computer, I moved some files from one indexed group to another in Devonthink (thus moving them from one folder to another in Finder). Now, on my home computer, they are viewable in the new group (and they also are in the right folder in Dropbox). But there are ghost versions of them in the old group and no matter how many times I sync or update indexed files, they still show up in the old group, grayed out, with the ā€œFile not yet availableā€ message. Other files in the same folder - ones which I did not move - appear normally.

Today I synced the office computer again, and resynced the home computer again, but the ghost files are still there.

Help would be appreciated!

The database is synced between two computers with copies of DT4 (Server edition).

  • Are you saying you are saying you’re syncing DEVONthink via Dropbox? What is reported in Window > Log?

The Dropbox account and folders are shared between the computers too.

Do you mean linked or shared? They are not the same thing.

I’m wondering if you have Dropbox default and the Dropbox folders to be set for ā€œmake available offlineā€?

Thanks for pointing out the ambiguity! The two computers share a dropbox account. The Devonthink databases are synced via Dropbox and the indexed files and folders are also stored in Dropbox. Does that clarify things?

And I should have anticipated @rmschne ā€˜s question - the first thing I did was to make sure all the relevant folders were made available offline.

Dropbox has another wrinkle to watch out for after you get the keep downloaded issue sorted out

There are two ways Dropbox can work with the Mac file system I think it’s still in a protracted beta but if one of your Mac’s has DBox set to act as file provider (the beta version) and the other is on the older version, then the file path to the index folders will be different and DEVONthink sees them differently on each system.

I can’t remember what I did that worked but once I got both of my Macs on the newer file provider set up my indexed folders all work on both systems.

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Indeed. In DEVONthink on the home computer, hold the Option key and select Help > Report Bug so we can inspect at the logs.

Done, thank you.