I’m running DT Pro 3.8 under BigSur on an Intel MacMini. 10 days ago I scanned and OCRed a batch of documents successfully. A few days later it did not work. Mostly the document would show up shortly as waiting to be processed and then disappear again without a result. Sometimes it would just hang in that state.
Following the advice given in some entries here in this forum I activated logging by adding the OCR.plist file, but there is no output when it hangs like this (when it works there is, so the plist itself seems fine). I also removed the helper app under my Library folder and reinstalled Abby. I also tried to remove the LIbrary/Application Support/ABBY directory as that was listed in an older entry here.
After all else failed I uninstalled DT yesterday as per help instructions and reinstalled it. OCR worked after that. Today started up the MacMini and it’s broken again.
One thing I noticed which may or may not be related. Yesterday when it was working I saw a version “12” folder under Library/ABBY/SDK and in there somewhere there was also some “protection log” and some count file. Today I checked the SDK folder again and it now has version “11” and no such files.
No MacOS update has been applied in the meantime. My initial OCR attempt after reinstallation happened before I entered my license - could that be related in any way ? I later on re-entered the license. OCR was still working before the reboot.
My Scanner is a ScanSnap ix500 and it comes with its own installation of Abby FineReader. Not sure if that can cause a conflict …
Any help would be appreciated !
Update: a few hours later I restarted DT and tried again and this time I could OCR a document. Checked the SDK folder and the version “12” is back, including the ProductProtection.log.
I tried many restarts yesterday and it did not help. After the reinstallation yesterday evening I OCRed somewhere around 100 pages. Some timing or volume aspect involved ?
Based on yesterday’s behavior I suspect it will continue to work today. Let’s see if it still does after a restart and then after a reboot.
The ABBYY SDK folder 11 or 12 is related to the version of the OCR that is running. If you are running macOS 10.12 or later DT will use ABBYY version 12, anything earlier it will run version 11. The folder contains temporary files and content generated by the SDK.
It is hard to say what caused your issue however if you get the problem again, could you send a copy of the log files. The easiest way to do this is in DEVONthink select the Help menu and whilst pressing the Option key select the entry Report a bug. This will generate an email containing the logs including the OCR log if available. If you mark it for the attention of Alan.
Thanks Alan,
several restarts, a reboot and a day later it is still working. Will file a bug if it comes up again and share any details I observe.
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Unfortunately the issue is back again today. According to the scanner’s counter I scanned about 300 sheets yesterday. All of them were successfully OCRed.
One thing I did do yesterday towards the end of the day was saving to a file for a few sheets. Then switched back to DT as target. OCR still worked then. Note that I did not use OCR on ScanSnap side even for those few files.
Today, the folder “12” under the SDK is again gone. Tried to restart DT but did not help. Sent a bug report via email.
Let me know if more information is needed.
The roller coaster continues 
This time I did not even restart since the last failures. Just tried again after 2 hours. Scanned with DT as target, OCR succeeds, document appears in DT.
SDK/12 folder is back.
If anyone is looking at this because they have a similar issue - FYI the issue is back since yesterday and several restarts and reboots did nothing to improve it. Opened a new ticket.