Hi there. Finally migrated to DT3. Doing some house cleaning. I recently upgraded my iPad to have generous storage I can devote to my databases, and also expanded my icloud storage. So all is well there. Years ago, when I had very limited storage I made a folder to sync important documents I needed for my mom and could not rely on instant internet access when I might need to pull them up.
I would like to now remove this sync folder from my database, but I’m totally lost on what I did at the time as far as replicants and whatnot. I did a few test deletes which did not go well. I’m going to try posting some pics that might make my confusion and trepidation pretty obvious.
Main DB group to keep
“Sync” group to delete
They both appear identical, so let me show you some pics of inside the Sync group that I’d like to safely remove.
Inside the white “EOBs” subgroup:
Inside the red replicant “Mom Estate” subgroup:
So basically, in my mind, I had the whole Mom Medical group replicated to this sync group, but some sub groups are replicated, some docs in some groups appear replicated, most are “white” in the “white” subgroups, but not reliably. Obviously, this was an ill-fated work around and I abandoned it years ago.
So how can I clean this up without losing these obviously very important documents in my “Mom Medical” group in the DB?
Thank you soooo much!!
Changes made to a replicated group apply to all the replicated instances.
See how your screen captures are showing the subgroups of the replicated Mom Medical group show the same item counts.
And it appears you had replicated the Mom Estate group elsewhere in the database, as non-explicitly replicated groups in a replicated group don’t appear in red but replicated ones do.
Here I have done the same essential thing…
- The DEVONthink User Library Logs parent group is replicated into 001 and 002.
- The Other Files subgroup of the replicated parent is replicated into 003, hence it appears in red.
-
Crash reports and Testing aren’t red since they’re not replicated elsewhere.
Also notice the item counts all match between replicated groups.
Thanks! You’re correct, the Mom Estate group is a subgroup of the Main database which I replicated and nested in the Sync–>Medical folder for whatever reason.
Probably a stupid question, but if I just dump this entire Sync folder in the trash, is all or most of this data now gone? Can I “unreplicate?” I notice now that there’s replicated docs in the global inbox which point to these files too. Ugh.
Ignore the locations in the Trash.
For your own comfort, make sure your local backups are current then yes, you can delete the Mom Medical group from within the Sync group. If there are no other instances in the database, the group should no longer be shown in red after you empty the Trash since there would be no replicants left.
However, since you replicated Mom Estate elsewhere, that should be shown in red unless or until you remove the other replicant(s) of that group. Not required; just noting it.
Yay I think I got it! I’ve had my backup drive permanently attached and dangling from my computer all week as I have been doing this major update and cleanup :). Still too scared to move to trash, I made a new test database and moved everything in there and the sync folder went empty and nothing showed as replicated anymore. So I moved it back to the regular db and it’s all normal again. I think I’m going to make a “Safe Space” dummy database for situations such as these where I don’t trust myself :).
After 10+ years of DTP I know I should be better at grasping the whole duplicate/replicant thing, but my own data sometimes just makes my head explode.
Thanks again for the insight and reassurance, almighty Bluefrog!!
You’re very welcome. Glad to be of assistance 
