When I open or drag a doc from a DT database, the name sometimes changes. For instance, I have a doc title “Latest Draft.doc” in my DT database, and when I open it or drag it into an email (as an attachment) it changes to “Latest Draft 1.doc” Is there something I can do to correct or avoid this error?
I’ve never seen a document change Name when opened in a database.
The name changes when I open it w/in an external application (not w/in DT itself) and / or when I attach a document to an email. It happens to some, not all, documents.
Are you sure it’s not "“Latest Draft-1.doc” (with a hyphen)?
Sometimes documents with identical Name fields in DT are stored with name-#.extension pathnames in the same parent directory, e.g.:
./webarchive/0/B32 to B31 downgrade.webarchive
./webarchive/0/B32 to B31 downgrade-1.webarchive
… with others in a different directory, e.g.:
./webarchive/1/B32 to B31 downgrade.webarchive
All three of those files are named “B32 to B31 downgrade” in DT. When dragged from a DT view the corresponding underlying filename will be used, e.g. “B32 to B31 downgrade-1” for the second one above, which may have “-#” appended to it.
Nope. Just opened it again to be sure. There was no hyphen there at all.
What’s the Name field for the document in DT and what’s its filename (just the final part, not the directory)?
Seems “Latest Draft.doc” (for example) is already used/cached somewhere and causing subsequent instances to be automatically numerically incremented.
I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I know what you’re asking for or how to find it exactly. If you give me a little more direction I’ll do my best to answer your questions. Thank you very much for your help.
Instead of answering my other question, let’s go back to this:
How exactly have you opened a document in an external application and/or attached it to email when seeing the name changed like you mentioned in your original post?
I’m near-positive the numeric increment is because the original name is already in use for some reason. Just trying to figure out how/why so I can construct a specific example that makes it clearer. 
Sure. Well, I just double click on the doc w/in DT, then click on the button that says “Open in external editor of viewer” (i.e., the one w/ the arrow and Application icon). As far as the email goes, I just go into DT, and drag the doc into the attachment section of my email. (I suspect there’s an easier way to do this, but I haven’t yet figured it out.)
By the way, when I select “Latest Draft.doc” and and scroll to Show in Finder the document shows up as "“Latest Draft 1.doc” Don’t know what that means, but maybe it’s helpful. Thanks again for your help…
When you do that, is there a “Latest Draft.doc” in the vicinity?
As others have posted, it sounds like the system is resolving a filename conflict.
Katherine
No, not as far as I know. I actually renamed the document accordingly just to differentiate it from other drafts.
How did you rename it? Except under special circumstances, doing direct file management under the Files.noindex hierarchy of a database is heavily discouraged. So, you should only do renaming of documents within DT to differentiate them. What/where are these “other drafts” you’re trying to differentiate?
Earlier you mentioned:
After using Show In Finder to locate a file under Files.noindex is an example of when you don’t want to rename, delete, or move it. Best to DT choose and manage its own storage names/locations under Files.index.
Seems what happened is that the “Latest Draft.doc” document in DT was originally associated with a “Latest Draft.doc” file under Files.noindex, then something saved “Latest Draft 1.doc” with “Latest Draft.doc” in DT still associated with it (correctly). Maybe that’s possible under normal usage if the external editor is Word; that’s only speculation since I’ve never used it.
Recalling what I wrote earlier:
Sometimes documents with identical Name fields in DT are stored with name-#.extension pathnames in the same parent directory (emphasis added)
In my main database quite a few documents have identical names (often even within the same group). Only those document names matter to me, not their filenames and locations. I only rename/delete/move/copy documents within DT, never directly manipulating Files.index content. That all works as expected.
But I’m less experienced with possible side effects of editing documents externally using different applications. There might not be any reason for concern with your “Latest Draft.doc” DT document being stored as “Latest Draft 1.doc” as long as opening the former is the correct content. If that’s true, the issue seems more with you thinking that the DT document name (e.g. “Latest Draft.doc”) will be used when attaching it to email, etc. instead of the current filename for it (e.g. “Latest Draft 1.doc”).
Ideally the mapping of DT document names to external filenames shouldn’t have to matter, but in certain usage cases it still might. Also, I seem to recall DT1 preferred to “export” documents using their document names while DT2 prefers to use filenames. Using my earlier example, depending on which “B32 to B31 downgrade.webarchive” is dragged to Desktop with DT2 I’ll get either “B32 to B31 downgrade.webarchive” or “B32 to B31 downgrade-1.webarchive”; with DT1 it would always be “B32 to B31 downgrade.webarchive”. That’s actually a significant change which I didn’t realize how much I disliked before this thread started.
Hopefully some shards of that are helpful… I didn’t intend it to get so long and rambling.