Move indexed folder to another location and keep all groups

Hi
I use DTP for bookkeeping. All invoices etc are scanned or saved in a google drive folder.

This folder is indexed in DTP.

All documents are than replicated in different groups (accounting - supplier - project).

Once complete the documents get a tag: ToAccounting that triggers a HAZEL script to copy these documents to an accounting folder.

The DTP database is synced with my laptop.

PROBLEM
Since I use Google Drive the folder structure is exactly the same on my laptop.
Strange things start to happen. Files are indexed double, get tags automatically (and sadly not as group-tags but as tags (blue)).

So I want to move the scanned/downloaded base folder to a local drive on the main computer.

However, I do not want to loose all the grouping/tagging work. I believe this is what will happen if I just move the folder in the Finder.

At this point we already have > 3000 files.

(BTW recently we lost most of or tags for no apparent reason - not a happy situation).

Thanks for any help

Arne

The easiest option is probably to export everything via File > Export > Files & Folders… and to index the exported stuff (e.g. into a new database). This retains all metadata.

By the way, what’s the path of your Google Drive folder? By default it should be ~/Google Drive in your home directory.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Does this mean I would have a physical folder structure similar to the groups in DTP? So leaving the flat file structure we have now (which is not a big problem in se - not keeping that in order in the future is a bit strange though)

The path is: /Volumes/GoogleDrive/Drives van mijn team/ADMINISTRATIE VERWERKING/Scan’s door Arne

This is based on Google File Stream and I believe the path is exactly the same on every Mac. There is an option to relocated the virtual drive to somewhere else but I found that crashes the Google File Stream.

Arne

An update

So I did the procedure as suggested.

The new database has 2 issues:

  • there are quie a few duplicates which I removed using “delete all instances”. In the original database these duplicates were not found.
  • the main problem is that all “group tags” have been converted to “tags”. That means that selecting a document and entering the tags does not replicate the document to the different groups as was the wanted behavior before.

Any solutions for that?

Actually it seems to me that simply changing the index-link to a new identical folder should be quite easy? (so I copy my flat folder in the google drive to a folder on a local drive and change the link in DVT to that new folder). No possibilities there? (editing the database e.g.)?

Arne

The exported folder structure will be identical to the group structure. But usually the structure of indexed folders and groups is already identical.

Currently only the standard Google Drive app is supported (and therefore indexing folders in ~/Google Drive and synchronizing databases shouldn’t cause duplicates), we’ll add support for Google File Stream too.

Is the “Exlucde groups from tagging” setting of the new database identical to the old database? See File > Database Properties.

No, this isn’t possible.