Restore File from Inbox from Time machine

DEVONthink
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I updated an Excel Spreadsheet yesterday that was saved in Devonthink. The Spreadsheet was in my inbox, and I accidentally deleted it. I must have also emptied the Trash as well, as that is empty too.

I have regular Time machine backups on my device, but can’t figure out where the the inbox (or indeed the trash) is saved/backed up to. What file do I need to restore in order to access previous versions of the inbox, or indeed trash?

Thanks in advance for any pointers!

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/Users/yourusername/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink 3/Inbox.dtBase2 is the path and filename of the Global Inbox. You can either restore that file to that location (meaning you will lose anything in the Global Inbox which you have put there since the backup) or - especially if there aren’t many items in the inbox - you could restore the file to a different location, select show package contents from the context menu in Finder and then figure out which is the file you need; you would then drag that to DT.

Trash is a location within a database, and not a separate database; as such you cannot restore directly from a backup of trash (i.e. you will not find the location ‘trash’ directly in your backup).

Warning: never change the contents of ‘live’ database files, as this will disrupt the database.

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Thank you so much @Blanc! Didn’t know the inbox was kept in a different location. Was able to retrieve the file in question. Sunday saved :slight_smile:

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  • If you are referring to emptying the database’s Trash, the file is sent to the system Trash, not deleted from the system.
  • If you emptied the system Trash too, then yes, a restore from backup would be needed.
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Ah, of course! Should have looked in macOS Trash. Ah well, went the long way round, but learnt something new. Thanks for pointing that out though!

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You’re welcome and learning something new every day is a great thing! :slight_smile:

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