When I attempted to upgrade from DT Pro Office 2.9 to 2.9.2, I couldn’t get the new version to replace the old version, so I first uninstalled version 9.0 (using CleanMyMac3) and then successfully installed version 2.9.2. However, when I did this, all contents in my global inbox disappeared. Nothing is missing from my databases, just the global inbox. Is there a way to retrieve my data?
We don’t encourage use of third party apps to uninstall DEVONthink. Unless their developers really understand what files were installed where, and for what purpose, unfortunate surprises can happen.
Unless you can recover your Global Inbox from backup, e.g., Time Machine, the contents of the Global Inbox are gone.
I was on a trip when I posted my inquiry. Therefore, I didn’t have access to my external backup drive that I updated using SuperDuper about a month ago. In the meantime, I used a data recovery program and I believe I have recovered all of the data lost from the DT global inbox. The only problem is that the recovered files don’t have their original file names, which is somewhat of a nuisance. Now that I’m home from the trip, I went to my external backup drive with confidence that I would be able to access all but the most recent global inbox files there. However, I cannot find any DT file in the ~/Library/Application Support/ folder on my backup drive. I find lots of files for other programs, just not for DT. This seems strange, since in the past when I acquired a new laptop, I was able to use the backup drive to boot up everything, including the DT global inbox files. When I lost the data from the global inbox most recently, I didn’t have the backup drive attached to my computer, so I know I couldn’t have done something at that time to make the global inbox files disappear from both the main and backup drives. Is there something else I should try to find the global inbox files (if they exist) on my backup drive?
Search for Inbox.dtBase2 on the backups.
Thanks for the suggestion. I found a file named Inbox.dtBase2 on my backup disk. However, this file is only 2.4 MB, so it can’t contain all of the documents I had in my global inbox. In any event, when I try to import this file into DT, nothing happens. The global inbox is now empty, and when I drag and drop the Inbox.dtBase2 file from my backup disk into the global inbox, it remains completely empty. When I try to import it instead of dragging and dropping, I get the same result. Also get the same result when I try to drag and drop or import into a new database I created especially to receive this data. I’m lucky I have recovered my files using the data recovery software, but I’m disappointed that I couldn’t retrieve the intact data using my backup disk. None of this makes any sense to me.
I just remembered that during the last part of April of this year I was experimenting with DT to Go 1.0 in anticipation of the release of DT to Go 2.0. I never got expert at it, and still am not. At that time I synced the DT data on my Macbook Pro with my iPad. Until now I forgot I did this, as I don’t use my iPad that much, but I just discovered all of my Global Inbox contents through the end of April on my iPad. I want to get the Global Inbox contents on my iPad over to my Macbook Pro, but I’m reluctant to do so lest I, again, loose everything. What’s the best way to transfer my Global Inbox files from my iPad to the Macbook Pro to avoid risk of losing the data?
Hello, I have a similar problem and cannot find any files in this Inbox.dtBase2 when I search backups. How large would this file be if there 200+ web clippings in the Global Inbox? Or are the files stored anywhere else?
Thanks,
Matthew
200 webarchives wouldn’t be all that large, perhaps a couple hundred megabytes or less. And no, the files aren’t stored anywhere else.
In the Finder, press Command-Shift-G and paste: ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink Pro 2, then Enter Time Machine from the Time Machine menubar icon and look for previous versions of Inbox.dtBase2.