Devonian Times Masthead

The DEVONtechnologies Blog

Articles tagged with troubleshooting

March 19, 2024

A Word About Reinstalling

Screenshot showing the file console.log containing error logs.

When you run into an issue with an application, e.g., DEVONthink, you may think you should reinstall it. Here’s why that shouldn’t be your first step. (more)

January 23, 2024

How to Rebuild an Apple Mail Mailbox

Screenshot showing the mailbox Rebuild command in Apple Mail.

If you are dragging and dropping emails from Apple Mail into DEVONthink, you may see a message in our Log window that importing a message failed. Here’s something you can try to resolve the issue. (more)

January 31, 2023

How to Handle Stalls and Crashes

Screenshot showing a crash report and the activity monitor.

Quality assurance is a top priority in the development of our applications. Nevertheless, misbehavior can sometimes occur, leading to an application crashing or stalling. To investigate and fix the issue, we need a report with some information about it. Here’s how you can support us with that. (more)

October 11, 2022

How to Send Logs for DEVONthink To Go

Screenshot showing selected log files in the Apple Files app.

Sometimes things don’t run like clockwork and you need assistance with a problem. To identify the exact cause of an issue, it can be useful for us to take a look at certain logs. Here is how you can send us these logs for DEVONthink To Go. (more)

April 19, 2022

How to Fix the Create Item Shortcut

Screenshot showing the file selection menu in Shortcuts.

If you are among the DEVONthink To Go users inclined toward automation, you may have run into an issue with the Create Item Shortcut action. In some cases, it seems you can only select a static file, not pass input from a previous action. Here’s a workaround for that. (more)

November 30, 2021

How to Relocate Indexed Files

Path dropdown menu in the Generic Info inspector.

There are two ways to get data into DEVONthink, importing and indexing. Importing copies files into your databases. Indexing allows you to keep your files in their locations in the Finder but still be used in your databases. Moving indexed files can cause them to appear as missing in the database. Here’s how to successfully handle such a move. (more)

November 16, 2021

Using Hidden Preferences

Hidden preferences in the integrated help.

DEVONthink is well known for being a highly configurable application with an abundance of preferences options. However, not all preferences are as broadly needed but may be useful to a smaller but still substantial group. To address this, DEVONthink has some hidden preferences available. (more)

November 21, 2017

Help Our Support with Screencaptures

When sending in support tickets, it is often very useful to attach screencaptures for us to look at. Sometimes the words you use aren’t the words we’d use and the real issue can be unclear. A screencapture is indeed worth 1,000 words, in many cases. (more)

May 12, 2010

Take Control of Permissions

When strange things happen on a Mac, like settings not being stored, license codes not being accepted, or DEVONthink databases behaving unexpectedly, file permissions could be the cause. UNIX permissions and Access Control Lists (ACLs) define what the logged-in user and the applications opened by her can do with items in the file system. If you want to learn more about permissions, have a look at Take Control’s new ebook Take Control of Permissions in Snow Leopard which explains this geeky subject in easy language and hands-on manner.

November 13, 2007

Correct File Permissions

Sometimes, file permissions go bad and leave ‘locked’ or ‘used’ files behind. If this happens to your DEVONthink Pro database, the application will continue to claim that the database is in use. If you are savvy with file permissions, use either the Finder’s Info panel or the Terminal to correct them. Make sure to adjust the permissions of all files in the package. A trick that also seems to work in some cases is to duplicate the database in the Finder and open the copy instead.