Hundreds of events created for each day of recurring event – how can I delete

[John]

Hi Jeff, I had the same problem, but only 7120 recurrences of one event.

I opened the first event (by date) of the recurring event causing the problem.
Opened Event
Edit all (Edit single, Edit Upcoming)
Message with progress bar > “Recurring event data is still being generated for this event. Don’t worry, you can safely navigate away – the process will resume in a bit in the background.” appears and was progressly slowly. So, I went home and today it was complete.

I noticed the long sought “Rebuild Recurrence” link at the very bottom of the event page.
Rebuild Recurrence
To rebuild recurrence for the event, click here.

Clicked it and fairly quickly for me, it removed the 7120 recurrences, without messing up the original event recurrences.

Hope you can solve your problem. Hang in there.

[Jeff Rose]

I was able to re-install the Events Calendar Pro plug-in and was able to click on the elusive metabox.

I still keep getting 404s

I changed the site’s “Cleanup Recurring Events Before” option to 1 months and the “Cleanup Recurring Events After” option also to 1 month.

The events are down to 18,747 events now but there it stays even 3 hours later.

Every time I tried an Edit all on any one of the events, I get a 404 (http://www.xyz.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=8992&action=edit&recurrence_rebuild=0b21b6fc84).

Jeff

[George]

Hey Jeff,

1. You mentioned wanting a refund earlier in the thread. I want to keep helping here but don’t want it to feel like we’re dodging that refund request. Just to touch on that: if you ever just want to go through with the refund, and end your license and customer support and move on to another plugin or something, let me know here in the thread and I will process the refund immediately. Just didn’t want you to think we forgot about this.

Assuming we can still work on this a bit, though:

2. When you attempt to “Clean up” an event, are you going to the very first instance of that event in a series? So, for example, if you have an event that runs from August 1st until December 1st, are you going to the specific first event on August 1 and clicking “rebuild recurrence there”? Using the “Edit All” link that John described above?

3. Do you get a 404 literally every time you click the “rebuild recurrence” link?

Thanks,
George

[Jeff Rose]

George,

1) Thanks. I still would like to get this fixed but if it becomes hopeless, I will request that refund.

2) I have selected the first event that remains but there were others with the same date that had previously been deleted in earlier clean-up attempts. Interestingly, the Edit all option is not available for the first of the remaining recurring events – only Edit. I also tried the very last event because I noticed it had the Edit all option but that didn’t work either.

3) Yes, the first URL is http://www.xyz.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=8992&action=edit and then I get a 404 with the URL I posted before for the first event and a 404 with http://www.xyz.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=8992&action=edit&recurrence_rebuild=5553f85212 when I tried to rebuild the recurring events by clicking the metabox for the last of the 17,051 instances.

I have also tried to get a tree view and then delete them all by sending them to trash but I still have 18,636 events.

I’m not sure why there isn’t a way using sql or ftp to delete the entire calendar and start over.

Jeff

[George]

Hey Jeff,

Thanks for responding here. I am thinking about the details you mentioned regarding questions 2 and 3 above, but in the meantime I wanted to touch on what you mentioned here:

I’m not sure why there isn’t a way using sql or ftp to delete the entire calendar and start over.

You CAN definitely perform SQL on your database to wipe out all events, organizers, and venues, and start over again. You can do this SQL that you write yourself; with the help of your web hosting company; or with a plugin like the one mentioned in this article → https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/reset-wordpress-website/

[Jeff Rose]

George,

I was finally able to find and delete the posts using criteria similar to this: WHERE post_type = ‘tribe_events’ and post_title = ‘title_of_events_to_be_deleted’.

I assume that any associated child table entries were deleted with a cascading delete. Please let me know if that is not true.

Also, there are some additional obsolete events I’d like to delete but I don’t see where the event date is stored. Can you provide a simple data diagram to help me find those events so I can clean those up as well?

Jeff

[George]

Hey Jeff,

After running this command, if you look through your site’s wp_posts database table, do you see any “child events” or other events that you want to be deleted? If you do not find them there, then they do not exist.

As for a simple data diagram, the closest thing we have to that is the knowledgebase guide here ? https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/wordpress-post-meta-data/

The date and other information is stored in post meta. These fields exist in the wp_postmeta table.

If an event ID is 1868, then this is the post_id value that will be used in any table row referencing that event. So, if you want to delete the event with ID of 1868, delete it from the wp_posts table. Then look for any rows associated with post_id of 1868 in the wp_postmeta table, and delete those too.

I hope this information helps,
George

[Jeff Rose]

Thank you George.

I’ve deleted the entries in the child table associated with the run-away event.

The calendar is working properly again and the problem appears to have been resolved.

Jeff

[George]

Glad to hear it, Jeff. Thanks so much for your patience and persistence here.

Best of luck with your site!
George

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