Version Folders

Lately I’ve noticed many duplicate files appearing in “Version” folders. Is this something new? I don’t recall dealing with Version folders in the past.

From the release notes on 3.8; Added new default smart rules Create Version and Remove Obsolete Versions for simple file versioning. The first one should be performed before saving, the second one periodically, e.g., before synchronizing. Exclude the group Versions from search if you don’t want old versions to be part of toolbar search results.

I wouldn’t expect this to be triggering automatically though.

That’s correct though the smart rule should be set to On Demand by default.

If you are seeing version files created despite that the “Create Version” smart rule has the condition On demand, check if you have any AppleScript scripts that execute the following command:

perform smart rule 

In my case, I was seeing version files created despite that I don’t have the new smart rules enabled, and eventually it occurred to me that one of my AppleScripts ran this command. Apparently, the command runs all DEVONthink smart rules, even those with On demand as their action.

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Good thinking, Batman (as they say)…

perform smart rule can be limited in scope, e.g. by using perform smart rule trigger import event, which is probably advisable. I have numerous scripts which use that command and which have not triggered any unexpected rules.

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