Events self-duplicating

[Jim]

I suddenly find that some — not all — recurring events in my calendar have sprouted duplicates, even triplicates. No idea where they came from, I haven’t changed anything and most of the events have been in place for a long time. Yes, I can go laboriously through and hand-delete the unwanted duplicates — better yet, how did this happen and how can I ensure that it doesn’t happen again?

Thanks,

Jim

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Jim,

Thanks so much for reaching out!

I’m sorry to hear that you are experiencing this issue!

As a first step, can you make sure that all of your Events Calendar related plugins are updated to their most recent versions?

You can use our Recurring Event Cleanup Tool in order to remove the duplicates that you are seeing:

https://theeventscalendar.com/extensions/recurring-event-cleanup-tool/

In addition, as a next step, let’s try to rule out if there is some type of conflict at play.
This is usually because of:

• A conflict with another plugin
• A conflict with your WordPress theme
• A template customization for the Events Calendar that requires updating

When it comes to that type of issue, it is preferable to troubleshoot in a staging environment if you have one.

A first quick test is to simply temporarily revert back to a default WordPress theme such as twenty-sixteen to see if the issue persists.

The next step would be to go through our testing for conflicts procedure and let us know what you find out.

Basically the goal here is to revert back to a bare WordPress installation to see if the problem persists. It also allows us to pinpoint what the cause of the issue is.

But, before you do that, there are 2 things I would advise:

• Make a backup of your database
• Consider activating a “Maintenance Page” plugin if you are doing this on your live site (to minimize impact on your visitors)

Let me know how that goes!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Jim]

I think that extension is going to be just the ticket (no pun intended) as soon as I figure out the best way to use it without deleting the wrong stuff.

As I’m looking at my list of recurring events, I’m surprised that the list is dragging around two years’ worth of events from the past. I take it if I delete those in the name of lightening the load, they will no longer appear on the calendar back in the day? I think that’s okay, as few if any people need to know when an event was two years ago — especially if they can see the same event as it’s scheduled in the present. My question is, are there any unwanted consequences to deleting events that have already occurred/recurred in the past? Like, if I delete the original first event in a series, will that affect all subsequent instances including today and tomorrow? I don’t want to start deleting things before I know just how much I’m ripping up.

Thanks, Jaime

Jim (also Jaime!)

[Jim]

PS — It would help if I could see the Event ID on each event that the extension calls out. I’ve looked and can’t find it in the list or in the edit pages for events. That way, I could tell which of two strings of recurring events, that are duplicates, to delete. Where’s that ID hiding?

Thanks

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Glad to hear that this extension may prove helpful for you.

My question is, are there any unwanted consequences to deleting events that have already occurred/recurred in the past? Like, if I delete the original first event in a series, will that affect all subsequent instances including today and tomorrow?

Deleting past events should not cause any issues with your current and future events.

Also, you can alter how quickly recurring events will be cleaned up in the future by altering the Clean up recurring events after in Events Settings < General.

You can find the Event ID when you view the event series on the front end and use the WP Admin Bar’s “Edit Series” link, that’s the parent post ID (i.e. the series’ post ID).

If you cannot access this event series on the front-end, you can find an event in your database’s wp_posts table and then find the “post_parent” column.

Maybe this annotated screenshot can help: https://cl.ly/2f370V353C1u

Let me know if that helps!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

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