After upgrading from DEVONthink To Go 2 to version 3 some customers experienced empty or broken documents. This affected seemingly randomly selected documents from PDFs to web archives and images. Unfortunately, in our months-long beta test this problem did not surface or wasn’t reported (or we wouldn’t have released the app).
We still have not located the root cause of this effect but firmly believe that it is caused by an issue in earlier versions of DEVONthink To Go 2. It propagated through sync also to the Mac and from there back to new installations of version 3, especially after switching from one sync method to another.
To protect your data we have implemented the following measures so far:
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Version 3.0.2 checks for these ghost documents with a file size of zero. When it finds them, it notifies you and activates a Ghosts smart group listing the suspects. It also deactivates the automatic sync and does not sync any database known to contain ghosts. This keeps the effect from spreading.
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Version 3.0.3 (becoming available soon) uses the fact that version 3 leaves the data store of version 2 intact to replace ghost documents if possible. This happens silently in the background and if all goes well you should simply not notice anything at all.
If you experience empty documents or broken PDFs after moving from version 2 to 3, please install the update to version 3.0.3 as soon as it has passed Apple’s review. If after launching or when you initiate a sync it informs you about possible ghosts, do the following:
- Check the Ghosts smart group.
- Identify the corrupted documents and try to replace them from your backup, best on a Mac or on another iOS device not affected.
- Move the ghosts to the trash and empty the trash.
When no ghosts are left, sync. Switch back to automatic sync when no more ghosts turn up.
We sincerely ask you to accept our apologies for these inconveniences.