I recently linked a number of files on my HD to DTP. After doing a little maintenance on the DB: Optimize and Back up and Rebuilding the DB all the files that were “linked” were gone (not the files… just their link in DTP)
To establish the file linkage I used the “link droplet”.
I am interested in using this feature more so want to know what I did wrong. Any ideas?
Thanks…
-bob
Bob:
I don’t know what went wrong. 
I’ll confess that I don’t use the Link Droplet, but I just did a test import of an RTFD file with it. I wasn’t in the mood to do a Rebuild of my database, but I did run Tools > Verify & Repair and Tools > Backup & Optimize, and the linked document was still there.
Why don’t I use the Link Droplet for imports? Here’s the answer. Look at your Info panel for one of those files. Although you can read a RTFD (or text some other file types so imported) you didn’t actually enter the text content into your database. The Info panel shows the Size of your import as zero bytes. Not only is the text of the document not actually captured for content searches, but See Also and some other important features of DT Pro can’t work with a Link import. The only text available to DT Pro is the Name and the Path of the linked document.
Assuming you have enough hard drive space available, I’d recommend setting your preferences so that “unknown” file types (e.g., Keynote presentations), PDF and postscript, images and (perhaps) Quicktime files are imported into the database Files folder when you do a File > Import > Files & Folders import. Other file types including a variety of text files, RTF, RTFD, HTML and Web Archives are instead imported into the body of the database. In this mode, the database is highly portable, so that you can move it to another computer or another volume on your computer without having link paths to external files. (There’s one exception: Word documents are captured as RTF text without images, and are externally linked to the original Word document, which you should keep for printing or editing.)
When DT Pro 2.0 is released, all documents will be stored in the database files folder, including text files, except for Index-imported and externally-linked files, which will still reside outside the database package file. Word documents will be stored inside the database package then.
Caution: Although there’s a command to Open With another application, e.g. MS Word for captured Word files, that doesn’t mean “Edit With”. If you edit the file and Save it, it will be placed in a temporary folder that will be emptied when you log our or reboot. Instead, use Save As after an Edit, and reimport the edited file into DT Pro.
Hope this helps (although I still don’t know why your links disappeared).
Bob,
there’s a rare bug in v1.0.2 related to rebuilding linked files. V1.1 will fix this. In the meantime it’s not recommended to rebuild the database if there’s no need to do it (e.g. “Backup & Optimize” is usually sufficient).
But you should be able to restore a backup as rebuilding creates a backup.
Thank you Bill and Christian… I will stay away from the “Rebuild”.
Bill… if I understand you correctly then I can save my OOPro and Mellel files in the Database package… like PDF files? Will I be able to open them with the parent application… edit and resave them to the database package or is that the trick to version 2?
Again thank you for the help.
-bob
Bob:
Yes, they will be copied to the database files folder if you have set that import preference for “unknown” file types. But text will not be captured. DT Pro will “know” about only the Name and the Path information. Well, also Creation Date.
You can use Open With to open the document in its native application. There you can edit the file.
CAUTION: If you press Save, the edited file will be sent to a temporary folder, which may be cleared when you logout or reboot. Don’t do that. 
Instead, in such a case use Save As to save the edited file to the Finder. Then reimport it to DT Pro, as that’s the only way to reflect the changes made.
Note: This behavior will probably be much improved in version 2.0.