Hi,
I am just learning about Replicants and I have about 500-600 duplicates that I want to transform to replicants. I found the Data>Convert to>Duplicates to Replicants
But what I am unsure of if there is a way how to specify where the file should “live” and what should become a replicant.
For example I would like to keep my 1099 Tax form (the actual file) in a group for my Bank records but would want DEVONthink to convert that same 1099 Form that I have in a group for my taxes to a Replicant.
Is there a way to do that?
Or how to exactly use Duplicates to Replicants?
I just want to understand it better before I use it.
Lastly is there a way to tell that a file is a Replicant? Is it that dotted double square instead of the solid one that is used for Duplicates?
There is still so much to learn, I really don’t know how I organized before using DEVONthink.
You aren’t grasping what a replicant is.
Replicants are instances of an item.
Replicants cannot be singletons. They always exist as more than one instance of an item.
You’re not going to preserve a document and have a singular replicant of it. So you will not have a single replicant in a group for your taxes. You will have replicants in both places.
So in your case, there should be no concern over this as both items will become replicants, like so…
If you don’t want that, leave them as duplicates.
PS: I would make sure you have enabled Preferences > General > General > Stricter recognition of duplicates so the file type and size are also considered in duplicate detection.
Oh ok, thank you so much that helps.
Brings up another question, so what happens if you delete one of the two? Are both gone then or does the one that gets deleted get moved to trash and the other one remains just is not a Replicant anymore?
I already had the stricter duplicates Option enabled. Thank you for pointing that out though. Very helpful
You’re very welcome 
Are both gone then or does the one that gets deleted get moved to trash and the other one remains just is not a Replicant anymore?
Good question.
Remember the Trash is a location in a database.
- If you delete one instance of a replicant, you won’t see a change.
- If you look in the Trash, you’ll see the one you threw away. However, you should note there is no slash through the filename. This indicates there is another instance of the item in the database. Items with a struck through name indicate they are the only copies of that item and they’re in the Trash.
Now empty the Trash. You’ll see the item outside the Trash has now reverted back to normal as there are no replicants of it.
You can also find replicants in the Instances dropdown of the Generic Info inspector and also the handy Reveal command in the contextual menu of the item list. Here you can see I have replicants in two subgroups (the groups indicated in red)…
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Perfect, thank you so much.
With that being said it should be pretty save to convert all my Duplicates (after a review) to Replicants.
What I take from that it does not matter which one I convert because both will be Replicants and now understanding the trash that makes more sense as well. That means though DEVONthink handles the data reduction of Duplicates to Replicants in the background, correct? Basically there is not one file and one link, this somehow done by DEVONthinks magic. Is that what I am understanding?
Thank you so much!
You’re welcome and you are now understanding thing correctly.
And yes, it is a bit of smoke and mirrors in the background that makes this all work.
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