Thanks for trying to help.
I am running both versions on my machine, and in fact, both seem to work just fine separately… I can add information to each, and they both seem to save the information OK and open it up fine with no data loss or confusion. It’s only when I try to look for and open the DT-Personal db with the DT-Pro that things don’t work.
(I haven’t tried Services, though… You might be right that my Mac might get confused which one to open up. Later on, I will choose only a single app to purchase and keep.)
For DT-Personal:
In my Application Support>>DEVONthink 2 directory, I can find no .dtbase2 file at all. There are 10 “DEVONthink-x.dtMeta” files, a “Backup” directory (duplicating the Meta files), a directory called “Files.noindex” which contains subdirectories for .rtf and .rtfd files (from my imported .rtfds, I presume), a “Plugins” directory (empty), a “Settings.plist” file, and a “Templates.noindex” directory (also empty). There is nothing else there. No .dtbase2 file.
For DT-Pro:
There is a separate folder in Application Support called “DEVONthink Pro 2” in which there is a file called “Inbox.dtbase2”. (Created during installation, I imagine.) There is also a file called “Inbox”, directories called “Plugins”, “Scripts” and “Templates.noindex” and a file called “SmartGroups.plist”.
One thing to note, after I got it DT-Personal up and running I set the “DEVONthink 2” directory as an alias to another drive partition I have, so all my files were off my main hard drive. It doesn’t seem to affect the database… everything saves and opens OK, and appears to mirror what I originally had in my ~/Library/Application Support directory. In other words, pointing to an alias rather than a real “DEVONthink 2” directory doesn’t seem to affect the running of the database. But I wonder if doing so somehow “hid” the .dtbase2 file? Still, a search reveals nothing.
(And yes, I did switch back to real files and not an alias, and it’s the same result.)
(And yes, I did turn off password protect which I had originally set, and it’s the same result. And yes, I did use the terminal to look for invisible files, and there weren’t any.)
In short, it’s a mystery. Where is the missing .dtbase2 file supposedly created by DT-Personal which I would obviously use if I wanted to open it up in DT-Pro?
Any other detectives out there? Thanks for your help!