Hi - I’m happy to find this community. This is my first post. I’ve been researching about Duplicates but can’t find an explaining of what I’m looking at. When I click on the Duplicates Smart Folder of a database, there is a list of 4 files named in blue font (I chose this in settings). Can I delete all four, relying on an original being somewhere else or do I need to be selective and not delete one, which will then no longer be a duplicate? Also, looking at Info - Generic on the right panel I see Instances (0 replicants, 3 duplicates), When I click on the Instances pull down it displays the path of 3 files listed as duplicates plus a 4th path that ends with a group name with its name in red font. What’s this telling me? Thanks.
I’m fairly certain that the manual, available under the „help“ menu in DT explains what duplicates are and how to deal with them.
Anyway: when you delete a duplicate, it’s gone. When you delete all of them, they are all gone. They are not copies of a single original! No „original“ remains when you delete all duplicates.
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As @chrillek suggests, the outstanding DEVONthink Manual (same as in Menu: Help) has extensive explanations of Duplicates, esp. compared to Replicants, and how to remove them. While there, take at look at some of the other topics for future reference and learning. Much more useful than searching this forum, IMHO.
Indeed, each Duplicate is an original and each one that gets deleted gets deleted. You can recover in DEVONthink’s Trash if not emptied.
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Manually deleting smart group results will indeed move all of them to the trash, the Duplicates smart group is no exception. But you could either use a smart rule instead (as the Delete and Move to Trash actions take care of this) or Scripts > Data > Move Duplicates To Trash
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The manual is good - just was unsure if I was understanding what I read. Thanks. - got it. You mentioned the script to move duplicates. From what I have read, this removes instances but leaves the oldest instance. For me, I’d like to select a duplicate and have all other instances deleted. Is that possible?