Event import deletes post/page content

[Beth]

Hi,

We’re a new customer and just getting started. I have searched all I can find on imports and don’t seem to see a similar instance to ours. My apologies if we’ve overlooked one.

We have a number of custom fields that often need updating (CE hours, faculty, lodging price). We can pull a CSV file from our CRM and then import the required field updates into the Events Calendar plugin using the import function. Everything works great and the fields are updated as expected – except, the page/post content (where we create a detailed description) is gone on the individual event pages/posts.

We need to update the custom fields, costs, etc often, but rarely the long description in the post/page content section. I’m trying to figure out how I can do this without copying and pasting the text in the WordPress text editor once the fields have been updated. Copying and pasting the post content doesn’t seem like it should be necessary since the import should only be updating any changed fields.

I’m not super technical, but I did deactivate all the plugins except the event plugin and Pro), did the import and then went to look at one of the events which triggered a fatal error about our header code. I didn’t want to leave our site too long in offline mode, but quickly went and look at a specific events page that had been updated and the same result – all the content in the content box was gone, but the fields were in fact updated!

Any suggestions? Thanks so very much!

[George]

Hey Beth,

I’m sorry that imports are behaving this way!

It sounds like you’re using the built-in CSV Import function of The Events Calendar, is that right? (Just want to be 100% certain about the import method).

If so, can you first share a copy of one of your import files with us? One of the files that upon import, the post content is deleted? You can upload the file to http://ge.tt, and then share the download link in a “Private reply” here – only you and us on the Support Team will be able to see/access the link.

Once we have this, I’ll test and try to learn more.

Thank you!
George

[Beth]

This reply is private.

[George]

Thanks for all of this information! There could be a software bug here; one important thing, however, is for me to test the CSV directly to see if maybe that file is playing a role in the problem.

Unfortunately, your http://ge.tt URL for me said the file was unavailable because the “upload was interrupted”:

Really sorry to ask again, but can you try uploading more time and then linking again? Apologies for the delay this causes; but I just want to be thorough here and see the CSV itself.

Thank you!
George

[Beth]

This reply is private.

[George]

Thanks for this Beth, I really appreciate your patience here. There is, unfortunately, a bug here at this time…well, in some sense anyway! The problem comes down to something that you acknowledged yourself in your first post in this thread – namely that the content fields are not in the import file itself, and so all the other fields update fine, but with no content in the CSV file, the content gets overwritten as “empty”.

Your comments on this were as follows:

We need to update the custom fields, costs, etc often, but rarely the long description in the post/page content section. I’m trying to figure out how I can do this without copying and pasting the text in the WordPress text editor once the fields have been updated. Copying and pasting the post content doesn’t seem like it should be necessary since the import should only be updating any changed fields.

I agree with you that copying and pasting shouldn’t be necessary – we can definitely improve this functionality. For the time being, however, I’m afraid that this is an inherent limitation with the plugin 🙁

The importing works fine aside from this so I do not think encoding issues regarding UTF-8 are at play here.

I’m sorry to bear the disappointing news!

— George

[Beth]

This reply is private.

[Beth]

This reply is private.

[George]

Hey Beth, thank you for your updates here and your patience with all of this in general – no worries at all about how the question has changed over the duration of this thread! I’m just glad that you’ve been able to hunt down the issue, in some sense 🙂

Stay tuned to updates – we have some coming soon! Check the “changelog” section of a given plugin update’s readme file to see the full list of changes included in that release.

Cheers!
George

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