Too much hassle to export and import, setting up on other app. Though tempted few times to go for other alternative.
OTOH once you get a workflow it does go fairly well. Iām currently exporting what will end up being around 30K items out of DT into Obsidian.
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@OogieM @Bmosbacker youāve convinced me to try Obsidian again, previously indexed 1 DEVONthink database to Obsidian, but saw few reports of index issues and stopped - didnāt want to bring yet another layer of complexity & potential problem to my data on DEVONthink. Will attempt exporting to Obsidian on weekend, try with 1 small database first. Fed up of using external editors to replace DEVONthinkās dinosaur 
editor.
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Let us know if we can help.
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[quote=āandy4222, post:44, topic:24769ā]
Are these text notes or pdf or other media too? [/quote]
Mostly plain text, email, rich text awith only a few PDFs and other misc file types.
Should be good to many times that many given how they are doing it. A simple SQLite DB can handle 500-750K records w/o any issues. I donāt forsee any problems with Obsidian with only 30-40K items. Now if I get up to a couple million or more that might be an issue.
I tend to think of DT as a very powerful and complex tool that can overwhelm you. So I have a fearful respect of it. I cannot remember in recent times any application that seemed so daunting with the myriad of capabilities: every click on any submenu or UI element can activate or deploy an unknown feature. There is definitely a mental overhead to it.
I started using it as a digital file cabinet, and nothing else. But, given time, use cases started coming to mind and with some automation (Keyboard Maestro here) I have managed to create a simple Journaling system, integrate my Pinboard links, and other useful features. I also feel that with enough automation skills (I hate AppleScript) DT can be adapted to any workflow I can throw at it. Itās definitely a tool for power users.
And boy, is it fast.
Weaker points are the mobile app (only adequate) and editors that look like from a decade ago, but it seems that the focus is in improving markdown capabilities, which is obviously the trend these days.
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Iāve been with DEVONthink since early in version 1. Long time ago. I put thousands of hours contributing to their forums. and writing plugins. No more.
It seems lots of folks buy it (and Tinderbox and a few other things) because some reviewer or blog or forum said it was a good idea to do so. Lots of those folks later show up tetchy in forums. Buying software with a trial and a long time thinking seriously about āwhyā, is important.
OTOH, I agree the support is, well, also tetchy. Users and support are too frequently oil and water, which shouldnāt happen. (Just happened to me, recently. Very unpleasant.) I think some venerable members of this community who decided to leave DEVONthink behind would not have done so if the attention they deserved was paid to them. āItās your faultā is not support.
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Iāve actually had good experience with DEVONThinkās support. However, that being said, because of periodic syncing problems I have relegated DEVONThink to a powerful utility, for example file conversions, importing blog posts and converting files to markdown, etc. I no longer use it as a repository.
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Yep. I have DEVONthink to Go installed on devices, but Iām a laptop-centric user. Iām not wary of the product.
Itās definitely (devonitely?) a good thing that PKM, OCR, search and sync solutions all have more specialized and/or cheaper options available now. Obsidian, for example, meets a real need and Iām glad to see a lot of people using it that wouldnāt have had time, ability or budget for the DT learning curve, or wouldāve had some other objection to it. And funnily that applies to some whoāve already put in the time to learn DT because needs and preferences change and DT doesnāt really ever become effortless.
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If Iām guessing your old username rightly, then Iām still using some of the scripts from years back you contributed to DT (particularly the ones integrating Keyboard Maestro and AppleScript for bespoke annotations.)
Very helpful, thanks!
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Well, I would like to thank you for the scripts and posts re using Devonthink you have provided in the past.
Apart from independent people like you, I have been impressed at how quickly Bluefrog and even cgrunneman (?) pop up with answers and suggestions but I do recognise ātetchyā for sure.
Anyway, thank you for all your contributions over there (as well as here).
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I also use it as a tool, not as a full on repository (tried that, didnāt like it). It proved especially helpful when writing a term paper for example. I created a database and pulled in (usually indexed them) the lectures, supplemental PDFs, my text notes, and highlights. OCRād anything that needed it, and then when I sit down to write I can start to put together my paper using searching. After Iām done, I get rid of it. Utilizing the searching and related items helps to make connections on the material I have not created.
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Maybe Iām misunderstanding you, but if your data is missing even from 2-year-old backups, I donāt think DTTG 3 could possibly be responsible, seeing as how it just came out a few months ago.
DEVONThink has said that they believe the problem and data loss happened in some previous rev and that it was only DTTG3 where it became obvious.
Which only makes the issue worse.
The files lost were archive files, as in you rarely need to get back to them but when you do you kind of expect that they will be there. The files appeared in DT but the contents were empty.
I have no idea when the error occurred. Many of the missing files were only identified after the user supplied tools to search for zero length files were posted on the DT forums.
DT itself then made changes to identify those ghost files sooner so that you had a chance to recover them but still no info on why or how or any updates on progress at the actualroot cause or any real fix. .
A file storage system like DT has 1 primary job. Storing files safely. That is the task it failed at.
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Ah, ok, that makes more sense. Yeah, itās a bit disconcerting that data loss to that extent could occur silently, with no sort of database integrity checks noticing the sudden change. I suppose itās a mark in DTTG3ās favor that it made plain what the rest of the suite could not.
for that and other reasons, I somewhat distrust internal/opaque databases, so in my planned DT deployment, most of my important files will just be indexed in place rather than hoovered into DTās own structure. I still need to learn about how between-computer syncing works for indexed files, but if thatās fully supported, then I think Iāll be good to goāwith confidence in my dataās long-term integrity.
DEVONthink provides a terrific explanation of indexing and importing above on pages 50-53 (version 3.6.3) of the DEVONthink Handbook.
I import the vast majority of my stuff, and only āindexā stuff that for use with other apps or people the files must reside in the operating system of the device or a server.
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Is that a separate document from the DEVONthink manual and the āTaking Controlā ebook?