Heh : )
You know, I do have a question. Three of my databases were saved by implementing @cgrunenberg’s timely suggestion. But I didn’t get to two of them got fast enough: they automatically indexed to the empty location, deleted all their files, and automatically sync’d those deletions to the sync store.
The fix seemed simple (if tedious) - simply syncing the exact same files from their new location to the exact same database. The problem? Links. When I indexed the folder to the same database again, even though it has the same file structure, names, etc etc etc, none of the links I’ve made to any of those PDFs from other databases work. To DevonThink the newly re-indexed files are simply new files, with new Item ID#s.
So I tried to trick it. I deleted the current instance of that database from my hard drive. I replaced it with a backup of the same database from a couple days ago. I opened DevonThink, paused all sync’ing and indexing, and fixed the indexing link in the backup version so that it properly pointed to the new Dropbox location–where all of the PDFs it’s looking for should be. And behold, they were there, and all was good. Or was it…
Here’s the problem: almost all my links from other databases into this one still seem to be broken. The weird thing is that it’s not literally all; maybe 5% still work, even though I would have assumed this should be an all-or-nothing deal since the problem is at the global level?
Does anyone have any suggestions for why links wouldn’t be working again with my “restore from backup” solution? I wouldn’t ask about such a minute quesiton, except that in my case it’s a pretty significant one: cross-links from my “notes” files into original source documents has become my constant citation tracking mechanism, and if they’re all broken…yikes.
Many thanks for any thoughts anyone can suggest!