Missing Global Inbox After reinstalling DTPro 3 3.9.17 With a copy of the Database

DEVONthink
1

I have upgraded my two year old MacMini to a new Mac Mini (both have Apple CPUs), and am fully backed up with Time Machine as well as additionally copying the DTPro Database separately. The MacOS version (Tahoe 26.4) was the same on the old machine and the new one. I have a longstanding policy when upgrading my Mac hardware to rebuild the new machine from scratch. This takes a lot of time, but I only do it every several years or so, and it gets ride of various amounts of junk accumulated over several years. I am also certain to have a fresh TimeMachine backup of the old machine as well as separate backups of the download and document folders. I only use the Time Machine backup for individual files, if needed. I have done this several times over the years, and make certain that the TimeMachine backup is current, all of my software on the old machine is updated, and that I replace the same version of MacOS on the new machine that was on the old machine.

After installing a fresh copy of DTPro 3.3.9.17 form the DT website on the new machine and certifying my license, I copied the DTPro database onto the new machine. I opened the new DTPro with the copied database, and everything appeared to be in place with no difficulty.

But when I opened the Global inbox, it was empty. There were ~10-15 items in the global inbox on the old machine. I have “repaired and verified” the database without problems, and “optimized” the database, once again without difficulty. Still no global inbox items. I exited and restarted DTPro several times without results.

I reviewed the suggested entries from the forum, but no success, and I got lost in the first rather lengthy entry of the four listed.

I presume I have the missing global inbox entries in my time machine backup if I only know where to look for them. The database in the TimeMachine backup should be identical to the one copied just prior to the reconstitution of the new machine, and I suppose I could restore the TimeMachine database copy to the new machine and try to load it. Not sure why that would make any difference, and it would take some time.

Help! I don’t want to lose these items. I am an almost 20 year user of DT through multiple versions, and my data is important to me. Any suggestions appreciated.

Bill McC

2

The global inbox is a database on its own and located in DEVONthink’s application support folder (~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink 3/Inbox.dtBase2), therefore either migrate this from your old Mac or restore it via Time Machine while DEVONthink is not running.

3

(Haha! Crossed signals with @cgrunenberg!)

There is no application error here. Your databases are not in the application so merely installed DEVONthink does nothing but create a new Global Inbox.

There were ~10-15 items in the global inbox on the old machine. I have “repaired and verified” the database without problems, and “optimized” the database, once again without difficulty. Still no global inbox items. I exited and restarted DTPro several times without results.

None of these things would have any effect as it’s not your old Global Inbox.

I presume I have the missing global inbox entries in my time machine backup if I only know where to look for them.

You don’t need to find your entries. You need to:

  1. Quit DEVONthink.
  2. Pull the Inbox.dtBase2 file from your backups.
  3. Put it in the ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink 3 directory, overwriting the current one.
  4. Launch DEVONthink 3.

Note: Version 3 is in maintenance and will be retired from development and support at some point. Version 4 is the active focus of development. We highly encourage you to upgrade sooner rather than later.