I dragged a .pdf file into the Global Inbox target in the Sorter. At this point I’d have thought this item was stored in the Global Inbox database awaiting further distribution into one of my other databases.
After dragging the item into the sorter, I unmounted the dmg file that contained the original copy of the .pdf file and thought nothing else of it.
This morning I went to move the .pdf from the Global inbox into one of my databases and I got failure entries in the Log and the .pdf is nowhere to be seen.
Am I correct in assuming that until the item is actually placed in some database other than the Global Inbox, it is truly not stored anywhere other than the filesystem?
In general when you drag something into the Sorter it is copied to its document that is located inside your home folder. When DEVONthink is running at the same time, it is then immediately handed over to the database. If you held the Command-Option keys down during the drag, an alias is created.
If you still have access to that dmg, can you reproduce this behaviour?
Update. This is NOT a problem with the Sorter. I thought I was copying a PDF into the sorter, but after downloading the .dmg file containing the pdf again, it appears that it was only a link that I copied into the Sorter, so of course there would be an error on import if the DMG file was no longer mounted.