Exclusions Not Working in Recurring Events

[Greg]

We’ve created some exclusions for a recurring event but none of them are working for us. Here is a screenshot of our set-up: http://d.pr/i/15hRI. We would love to see this work.

[Josh]

Hey Greg,

Thanks for reaching out to us! Also, thanks for providing the screenshot with the appropriate settings.

I’ve tested this on my local install and was able to get the exclusion rules to work as expected using the settings you’ve provided.

When this isn’t working for you, is it ignoring the exclusions completely or is one working and not the other? Additionally, are you updated to the latest version of the plugin and tried following the Testing for Conflicts procedures?

Let me know if this reveals anything.

Thanks!

 

[Greg]

Thanks for looking at this…what I really need is only one exclusion, the last Wednesday of the month. I deleted the event and recreated it with that single exclusion and still no bananas.

We are up to date on everything on the site in terms of core and plugins.

I’ve gone through all of the tests for conflicts and nothing seemed to help me out here.

[Josh]

Hey Greg,

As a quick check here, could you try setting an end date for the recurrence (within a 2 year range maybe ) rather than the “Never” option there to see if that changes anything for the exclusion in this case?

Thanks!

[Greg]

Thanks, solid idea…but unfortunately, no bueno. We still get the exact same result.

[Brook]

Howdy Greg,

Thanks for giving that a go. I just tried to recreate your exact event, but it is working properly for me. :-/

One thing that could be interfering is that you can not exclude the first occurrence of an event. Could you double check for me that the original ocurrence on the 20th is being created? Or is that missing as well?

Could you try creating a new test event on a Monday? Have it recur every day for 5 days, then exclude the Wednesday. Does this event work?

If none of the above yields fruitful info then I have to ask a question I don’t want to ask: When you tested with the theme/plugin disabled did you try updating the event (so that I resaved all ~40 instances) ? Or did you just try disabling plugins and viewing the event? The reason I ask is because unfortunately in this case simply viewing the event probably isn’t enough. If something is conflicting its probably doing it while the event is saving, and so we might need to redo the conflict test only resave the event this time. Even better, why not create that test event with the plugins disabled and theme switched? But this is a last resort, hopefully the above sheds some light on whats going on.

Cheers!

– Brook

[Greg]

OK, so I’ve gone back to the event I created, deleted it, and recreated, making sure the first event wasn’t the excluded one. My result was…well, the same as it has been.

I also tried the other example you gave, creating a test event for one week and excluded the Wednesday. This one worked as expected…in my theme with all plugins active.

[Josh]

Hey Greg,

Thanks for following up here!

How about the final portion of Brook’s suggestion above? Did you try re-creating the event rather than updating the existing one with all the plugins deactivated and default theme activated?

Thanks!

[Greg]

So I wasn’t sure how I checked it before, so I just went back in and deleted the event and emptied the trash, though, when I emptied the trash I got this message (http://d.pr/i/13k8K – I am an admin on the site). But when I check the site, the trash is indeed emptied.

I then changed the theme to 2016 and deactivated all plugins but The Events Calendar & The Events Calendar Pro.

Then I created the event to start on May 4 and go to the end of the year every week. I added the exclusion (see http://d.pr/i/18BbJ).

But, it still didn’t work: http://d.pr/i/1iFoL.

I’ve left everything deactivated and the theme defaulted. If ya’ll want to login and check it out let me know, glad to send you a login.

[Josh]

Hey Greg,

Thanks for following up with us.

That’s strange that you would get that warning when attempting to empty the trash. I wonder if there is a resource limitation that we’re running into here (which could also impact the event creation with the proper exclusions). Does this happen when you attempt to delete single events from the Trash or when attempting to empty the trash of your posts or pages?

Thanks!

[Greg]

I don’t think it is a resource limit, I’ve got my own server and plenty of resource on it.

I did some more testing and found that I can empty the trash on single items without issue.

When I add a recurring event to the trash and try to empty it I get: http://d.pr/i/123BZ. Butttttttt, the trash actually does empty.

[Josh]

Hey Greg,

Definitely a strange issue there. I’m still unable to recreate the issue as well as other members on our team.

Are you able to spin up a fresh install on your current server and add just the Events Calendar plugins to test and see if the delete as well as exclusion issues persist there? I know this is a little bit of a headache but it will help us to see if the issue lies within the WordPress install or if there is a potential issue with the environment.

Thanks!

[Greg]

OK, so I tested this in my template that I use, which the app I’m having trouble with is a copy of.

http://wordpress-4684-24500-58161.cloudwaysapps.com/events/

So you’ll see that I created the same event I’m trying to create in the other site and it worked just as we would want it to work. So this is on the same server and is the same theme, with the same plugins.

So…where to from here?

[Josh]

Hey Greg,

Thanks for trying that out! At least we know now that it isn’t directly an environment issue.

So, a couple of things that come to mind that could impact here:

• Can you verify that the timezone set on your WordPress installation matches the server timezone?
• Are there any special customizations that were made in the wp-config.php file for this site?
• Since you’ve followed all the Testing for Conflicts procedures it doesn’t look like it’s a code related issue. However, there could have been some persistent settings in the options table for your site. Looking there, is there anything there that persists even if the associated plugin is deactivated?

Let me know if this helps.

Thanks!

[Greg]

OK, so the timezone situation…my timezone on my server is set to default, which I’m guessing is UTC-0…that is what I’m looking at here right? http://d.pr/i/15asq The timezone on the website is set to UTC-6. I flipped it back to UTC-0, deleted every event, emptied the trash…recreated our test event and the result was…WINNING! Seriously, that did it. It was a time issue all along. I don’t know why that matters…sounds like a bug to me, but finally we can close this thing out.

[Author]

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