Tables have disappeared

A table disappeared – how do I restore it?

Assuming I cannot find a missing table, does anyone have an alternate plugin that allows you to restore deleted tables?

I don’t know how this table was deleted, but it is going to take a lot of work to redo it since there are no backup tables

I am very reluctant to create a new table if it could suddenly disappear and I cannot recover it.

Hi,

thanks for your post, and sorry for the trouble.

That sounds really strange and I really can’t think of a technical cause in the plugin that would delete tables.

Can the table still be seen somewhere (on a published page that was maybe cached, for example in the Google Cache or the Internet Archive)? Then, we might be able to obtain it from there.

If possible, I’d like to take a direct look at this on your site. Could you therefore please create a temporary admin account for me and send me the details via email (the address is in the main plugin file “tablepress.php”)? That way, I can investigate this directly and might be able to restore the table. Thanks!

Regards,
Tobias

Hey Tobias,

Thanks for the reply. The only thing that was still showing was the shortcode, no table. Everything was gone in the back-end. I’d already been toying with removing the plugin, so I just did that as soon as I realized the table had gone. Sorry I can’t be of help anymore.

Hi,

thanks for that extra information, Wonderful Wanderings! Is it possible that someone logged-in and deleted the table? It might still be in the database, and if you are interested, I’ll gladly take a look.

Maybe @imageval has more information as well.

Best wishes,
Tobias

I’m pretty sure my tech guy would have told me had he removed anything. I understand you want to figure this out, but I won’t use it anymore so I don’t want to put time into it, sorry:)

Hi,

no problem, I totally understand! Sorry again that this happened and that it caused so much trouble!

Best wishes,
Tobias

No worries! There are plugins that are a way bigger pain in the ass:D

Hi,

haha, I hope that TablePress never reaches that state ??

imageval: My offer still stands, of course! I really want to help!

Best wishes,
Tobias

Thanks, appreciate it, but I’m good:)

Hi,

yes, I understand, but maybe imageval, who also posted in this thread would like some help? Or are you two the same person?! ??

Regards,
Tobias

Hi, Tobias, I hope I can use this thread to bring some more information on the issue described by @wonderful-wanderings here, as it did happen to me (at least, it looks like the same thing to me).

My tables used to work and display correctly on the website until some recent plugin OR WordPress update. Unfortunately, I can’t precise the version that did brake my Tablepress tables, as I have just noticed the issue. But maybe I can provide some information that could help tackle the problem.

I am currently using the most up to date plugin version (v 1.7) and WordPress (v. 4.6.1._pt-br).

Problem description: all my tables like [table id=7 /] will display on the webpage as [table “7” not found /]. When I go to the Tablepress admin page, there aren’t any tables there. I searched briefly for some documentation on how Tablepress stores data, but couldn’t find anything in that regard. I have thus ran the following query (SELECT * FROM wp_options WHERE option_name LIKE ‘%tablepress%’) and found what appears to be the Tablepress data. On column ‘option_name’ I can see a long string which reads ‘_transient_tablepress_928c8d99583e3642c97305c73fdf2c4a’. This is the row that holds my table with ID 7 as it begins with:

<table id="tablepress-7" class="tablepress tablepress-id-7">

My query search results also brought me two rows with options names ‘tablepress_plugin_options’ and ‘tablepress_tables’.

This is the data I see on row ‘tablepress_tables’, which looks like the row that maps where the plugin should find the data:

{"last_id":7,"table_post":{"1":5476,"2":5480,"3":5488,"4":5493,"5":8011,"6":8174,"7":8251}}

Is it possible that the data was somehow corrupted? On the string above, the ID associated with “7” should match the ID of the row corresponding to table 7 on wp_options table?

I hope the information provided helps shed some light on this.

As a final comment: all the data required for Tablepress to work seem to be there. But something is probably preventing the module from seeing its data. Maybe a plugin update was the responsible for the issue, but I can’t tell exactly if that is the case. Anyway, if you can tell me the dynamics of how the module stores its data, I can maybe fix it ‘by hand’ straight in the database.

Thank you in advance and let me know if I can provide any further information on this issue.

Hi,

thanks for your question, and sorry for the trouble.

The row with _transient_tablepress_928c8d99583e3642c97305c73fdf2c4a is a cached version, that should not matter here.

The row tablepress_tables is the necessary information here. It’s a mapping of the table ID to a post ID – but not in the wp_options table, but in the wp_posts table.
So, in the wp_posts table, there should be entries with post IDs 5476, 5480, etc.
Can you see those in the wp_posts table? They will also be JSON code.

Regards,
Tobias

Tobias,

Ok, I have just checked and tablepress_tables is correctly mapping the Post IDs. So this doesn’t seem to be the problem here. Is it possible that the cached versions are corrupted and I should remove them, and maybe Tablepress will recreate them?

I can see the full source code for the tables are cached on wp_options on these rows I have mentioned.

Where is Tablepress storing the full source code for each table besides wp_options?

Thank you again