If one uses indexing for the DT database, while putting the full files in a normal Finder folder, it is possible for DT to get confused if the data base and/or folder of originals is moved. It “must be” easy to tell DT where to look to reestablish ALL of the links. I assume it should still be easy if both the database and folder are copied to another machine.
Unfortunately, I’ve not found the trick. It’s probably in front of my nose.???
The only possible workaround coming to my mind is to use aliases/symbolic links to make the old and new folder structure compatible.
I believe this has been suggested here in the past. To reduce complexity (e.g., avoid the overhead of managing symlinks in the background), I believe user intervention is needed. The approach taken by Adobe Lightroom (and others) is to provide a “locate” menu action to enable the user to tell the app where the missing file/folder is.
Click the document or folder with broken links, choose “locate” from the menu, Finder opens - navigate to the new location, select the new location, links are restored to the extent possible.
This tells the app where to re-establish the root of the path. Works across volumes. If subgroups with broken links exist on the same path, then they are re-linked at the same time. Might need intelligence to avoid indexing/importing documents on that path that were not indexed/imported before and eliminate database documents that disappeared from the moved folders.
Korm, That’s exactly what I was looking for; it is the kind of thing that other developers have allowed for, but it doesn’t seem to exist in DT.
Christian, I don’t understand procedurally what you are suggesting. I may be a bit dense this morning.
Let’s say the documents were in the folder /A/B/C and are now in the folder /D/E. Then you could create an alias C in the folder /A/B pointing to /D/E.