Transition to a New Sync Location

With the announcement of Box to discontinue WebDAV, here are some tips on switching DEVONthink to a new cloud service.

If you’re syncing DEVONthink on a Mac, it’s a simple process:

1. In DEVONthink’s Preferences > Sync, enable a new sync location.
2. With the location selected, enable databases to sync to the new location.
3. Get a tea or coffee and wait for the databases to be uploaded to the new location.
4. Disable the old location.

For your iOS devices it depends whether you also run DEVONthink on a Mac.

If you also own DEVONthink on your Mac:

1. First migrate to the new location from your Mac using the procedure above.
2. Add the same new location, which already contains your databases, to DEVONthink To Go in Settings > Sync: Locations: Edit Locations. Make sure you’ve correctly adjusted the Download Files switch.
3. Enable all databases you want to sync.
4. Grab some lunch and wait for DEVONthink To Go to merge the local data and the data from the new location.
5. Disable the old location.

If you own no Mac but one or more iOS devices from which at least one holds all data:

1. On the device that holds all data add the new sync location in Settings > Sync: Locations: Edit Locations. Make sure you’ve correctly adjusted the Download Files switch.
2. Enable the databases you want to sync.
3. Cut some onions while DEVONthink To Go uploads your data to the new location.
4. Disable the old location.
5. Follow the procedure above to migrate your other iOS devices.

Note: The iOS device needs to be unlocked and DEVONthink To Go in the foreground during initial uploads and downloads.

Finally, if you own just iOS devices and all of them shallowly sync their data to a cloud service you need to be careful. The old sync store is the only place where all documents are fully stored. We recommend to contact our customer support before migrating. If you are unsure if all data is available on your device you can activate the global Not Downloaded smart group. It shows documents that are shallowly synced but not downloaded, an indicator that at least one database is shallowly synced and not fully downloaded.

After migrating the sync store to the new cloud location we recommend that you test the setup for a few days to make sure that everything is working as expected. Then you can first clean the sync location from Preferences > Sync (Mac) or Settings > Sync: Locations: Edit Locations > (swipe location) > Clean (iOS) and later remove the location from all your devices.