Global inbox documents missing after upgrade

DEVONthink Tips
1

I’m in a bit of a panic. A notification displayed yesterday to upgrade to the latest version of Devonthink. I went ahead and did it.

I always back up my databases but I guess I failed to backup the location of the global inbox. I had some important documents in there. They are missing. A count of 7 appears next to the inbox icon but the content list is empty.

I dug around to try to find the location where such things are stored. ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink Pro 2/Inbox seems to be empty. A file next to that directory “Inbox.dtBase2” shows as having size 10.5 MB. That seems a bit promising.

This is somewhat devastating news for me if the upgrade recreated the Inbox folder without preserving the contents.

Could anyone provide me some support in recovering my files?

Regards,
Barry

2

Assuming that the files are indeed still in “Inbox.dtBase2”, the following will work:

  1. Quit DT
  2. Move “Inbox.dtBase2” out of the Application Support folder to the Desktop. Don’t worry that you are moving a needed file as DT will recreate it upon launch.
  3. Rename “Inbox.dtBase2” to anything, making sure to keep the “.dtBase2” extension.
  4. Launch DT and select open database, choose the file from step #3, and the secrets will be revealed!
  5. Move the files to the Global inbox, and then close the database, and delete in the Finder.
3

Thanks a bunch for such a quick response. It was very educational. I see now that Inbox.dtBase2 is a full database just like any other database I have.

I did just as you suggested. Closed DT. Copied Inbox.dtBase2 to desktop and renamed it “ss.dtBase2”. I opened that from with DT and it was empty.

However, I was able to go into the database with “show package contents” and find all my files in there. YAY!!

I can certainly follow through now, extract my files, and rebuild the inbox. However the global inbox as it stands is not working right. Once I was able to look at my files (thanks to your help) I was able to get access to one of the names of the files. DevonThink can find this file using the search bar at the top right. When I select “reveal” it identifies its home as the global inbox. However the global inbox shows no documents in its list. So some metadata about the database is missing.

4

Try running Tools > Verify & Repair on that Global Inbox.