I’ll be honest, as a former IT career guy, I’m not big on manuals. Any tool that requires reading manuals to avoid losing data is not intuitive enough for me. Reading manuals reminds me of work, and I didn’t retire early to keep working…
In other words, it’s not you, it’s me.
So yes, I did manage to delete some things I did not intend to. Fortunately these were all on Google Drive so all I had to do was take anything put in the trash today and restore it from Google Drive’s trash folder. The files are all syncing back to my hard drive. No harm, no foul.
In reading the Importing & Indexing section it is now obvious to me that DevonThink does not handle files in any way that will be helpful to me. Whatever I hoped it would do with regard to finding related files isn’t worth the negatives for me. Nor does it seem to work well with 8GB of RAM, unlike every other app I have installed. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Thanks for your prompt replies in this thread.