My recommendation would be not to use DevonThink. Try the Finder instead.
I am serious.
DevonThink isn’t designed as a file system manager and it isn’t fit for that purpose.
From the unix point of view a DevonThink database is a folder on your hard disk. However, it is very confusing to think of it in that way. For the hierarchy in that folder (that is the devision into subfolders and the location of the files therein) does not mirror the hierarchy you see in DevonThink: groups do not correspond to subfolders, replicants aren’t aliases, and there is no clear relation between the place of an entry in DevonThink’s hierarchy and its place on your hard disk’s file system.
For that reason, all programs except DevonThink should treat a DevonThink database as if it were a file rather than a folder.
For that reason you run into trouble if you try to change a document in the DevonThink database from outside DevonThink (DevonThink doesn’t know of those changes and when it comes to know of those changes it might not know how to handle them). The same holds true for iTunes, iPhoto and a lot of other database managers: when you add, remove or rename files in the iTunes folder iTunes gets confused.
If you save a Word/Excel/Whatever file to a group (say ‘mammals’) in DevonThink by means of Korm’s script ([url]A better way to save Word files (and other non-web files)? - #9 by jprint714]), DevonThink imports that file to its database (somewhere in its filesystem) and adds a reference (entry) to that file in the ‘mammals’ group. No problem at all.
However, if you continue editing that document in Word/Excel/Whatever after adding it to DevonThink or if you reopen it from within Word/Excel/Whatever you might get in trouble, for in that case Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Whatever changes the file without DevonThink knowing about it.
In other words: DevonThink is not fit for the kind of things you want it to use for.
So, do yourself a favor, create a new folder in your documents folder in the Finder, open a DevonThink database, select the entire hierachy and drag it into the newly created folder, repeat this with all the DevonThink databases you have, finally delete DevonThink and all its databases.
Best wishes,
Arno.
By the way:
(1) I am afraid that if your computer is unaccessible, you will not be able to access any files on that computer, whether they are inside DevonThink or outside of it.
(2) For the fourth time: you can’t create a folder structure in DTP. You can create a group structure in DTP but as I explained above this group structure does not correspond to a folder structure on your hard disk.
(3) AFAIK if a DevonThink database gets corrupted you don’t loose your files and in most cases you can easily rebuild the database (Tools → Rebuild Database…), or restore a backup from within DevonThink (Tools → Restore Backup…). In addition, I recommend a good external backup.