I’m having Devonthink index a folder with markdown notes. This means that new files will appear in and disappear from that folder as I create new notes or move them to a different folder. My understanding is that Devonthink will keep track of these changes and update its index accordingly. This seems to work for most files, but not for all and I’m trying to understand why it fails in some cases.
For example, I have moved a bunch of files into a subfolder. If I now navigate to my notes folder in Devonthink (or is it called a group, when it’s in DEVONthink?) it still shows me the files I moved, which is fine, and when I click on one of them (pretending I don’t know that it is no longer there), DEVONthink will realize that it is no longer there, update its index and the file disappears in fron of my eyes. Everything as expected, so far. But as I click through the list of files, one of them does not disappear instead, DT tells me the file is missing:
And here is a second issue, probably not related to the first, but I’ll keep them t together in case they are related.
As mentioned above, I moved a bunch of notes into a subfolder and I assumed that since it is a subfolder of a folder that DT is already indexing, the files in that subfolder will also be indexed. But this is not happening. DT shows the subfolder in the folder hierarchy, but it is empty (in DT, not in Finder) and has a slightly lighter shade of grey. What does that mean? Is my assumption wrong that DT will automatically index subfolders?
I think much of what you are seeing is fully discussed in the “DEVONthink Manual”, starting on page 53 (3.9.8 version) … take a look there and see if there is some resolution for you. At this stage, no need to repeat all that already-documented stuff here. Come back and let us know outcome.
I read pages 53-57 about indexing in the manual and what I learned is that indexed files synced to the cloud are not automatically updated in the index but the update has to be triggered manually using File → Update Indexed Files. This explains why the subfolder with the moved files remained empty in DT.
(As a side node: I think it would make sense that such an update is also triggered when a group/folder is accessed in DT. Also, when DT complains that files are missing and asks you to repair the database, I would expect that the repair process includes updating Indexed Files. I might even go as far as saying that rather than complaining about missing files (e.g. when trying to sync the database), it would make sense if it went ahead and updated the index for these files, but I can see why that could be seen as asking for too much automagic.)
However, I still don’t understand why DT updates it’s index when I try to access some of the moved files but not others (i.e. the first problem in the OP).
You can do this if you associate a script that does ‘update indexed files’ to the group. The script would run everytime you clicked on the group (running scripts from groups is also in the manual)
When using indexing, it is always best to do any moving around from within DT than in finder. That way you won’t get missing files.
Not necessarily in the Finder (in the case of my notes it would most likely be in my note-taking app), but if you mean “outside of DT”, then yes, that is what I meant.
