The databases disappeared, and now it's DEVON itself!

DEVONthink Tips
1

Hello - some issues with my DEVONthink Pro, which I’ve been using for less than three or four months.

Recently, I did a big reorganisation of folders and notes, which included renaming the databases only through the ‘Properties’ window on DEVON itself. Every time I quit DEVON after that, and restarted it later, not all the databases show up (I always need all of them open), and it always comes up with all these irritating “The database xxxxx appears to be open and in use!” boxes. After going through all of these, I would, and still do, always find that quite a few databases are missing, meaning I have to look for them and open them via Finder.

So - how do I make sure that all databases open upon starting DEVON?

I emailed Devon Technologies about this - and while they responded very quickly (which I think is brilliant of them, as companies rarely do that with emails), I don’t think they understood the problem, nor did I explain it well enough - so I thought I’d seek the opinions of others.

Now…the second problem. Just now, I opened a note in a separate window and then accidentally closed the main window (with all the databases and everything) by pressing command & W instead of command & S. The main window closed, and I haven’t been able to reopen it, regardless of all the options I’ve tried, from opening via the ‘File’ menu when DEVON is ‘open’ to quitting and restarting to trying to open via Finder. Just…nothing. But the Finder bar changes when Devon is open, and the external window I had open continues to open. It’s a peculiar problem at best!!

2

If each time you open databases in DTP you receive the warning message, then something is going on that is damaging your databases. Renaming databases in Database Properties does not rename the database package in Finder - it only changes the displayed name in DTP. You need to close the database, close DTP, find the database package in Finder, rename it, then open DTP and the database.

Nevertheless, that’s not why your databases are getting damaged.

We’ll, we’re not part of that conversation, and if DTech didn’t hear it right on their side we probably won’t either. I’d suggest continuing the dialog here could garble things even more. As you found, Support can be very proactive and responsive so I’d urge you to continue troubleshooting offline with Support. Tell Support the exact steps - in sequence - you take that reproduce the problem, as far as can remember. Look in the Console and see if there are any messages from DTP and/or crash logs, and send that all to Support.

I’m also prone to pressing cmd-w when I meant cmd-s. :unamused: Try File > New Window > [your database]. It should open a new window in the default view for that database.