Almost All Store items have become Orphaned content

Hello @alin99

From your description, it seems the issue might be related to the process of converting simple products to variable products. When you upload a CSV file, it should ideally include all the variations for each product. If variations aren’t included, the products could become orphaned when you convert them from simple to variable.

As for deleting orphaned items, they indeed disappear from your store because they are no longer linked to any product.

To fix this issue, you need to include all the variations in the CSV file before you upload it. The CSV file should have a row for the main product and additional rows for each variation. Each variation row should have the same SKU as the main product, followed by a unique identifier. This will link the variations to the main product and prevent them from becoming orphaned.

If I export everything from the store, then delete and empty everything from the store, then reupload/import the exported file, would this fix the issue?

As for your question about exporting everything, deleting, and then reimporting, it could potentially solve the issue if the exported file includes all the variations correctly. However, it’s important to make a backup of your site before you proceed with this step, just in case something goes wrong.

Cheers,

Hi Darla @aguinaldodarla ,

Thank you for responding right back.

(When I first set up the store I hadn’t found much information in how to set up a variable store so everything was done as simple items..)

Anyhow to fix this, I have to add the SKU to each variation in the exported csv? Also, I have to have the main product as “variable” and the variations as “variations” ?

Then delete/empty trash, and re-upload the csv file?

Can I just delete the items database and re-create it from scratch? I’m totally not sure how but google has been able to find 404 not found pages/items… which is very strange because the items are in the store and aside from using Google’s 404 link, I cannot get the error message… lol.

Thank you,

Alin

Hello @alin99,

(When I first set up the store I hadn’t found much information in how to set up a variable store so everything was done as simple items..)

You can check this guide on how to configure variable products: https://woocommerce.com/document/variable-product/

Anyhow to fix this, I have to add the SKU to each variation in the exported csv? Also, I have to have the main product as “variable” and the variations as “variations” ?

I’m not sure about the SKU part but what’s more important is to format the CSV file properly, for example adding the parent product ID, etc. You can find more about this here: https://woocommerce.com/document/product-csv-importer-exporter/#adding-new-products

Can I just delete the items database and re-create it from scratch? I’m totally not sure how but google has been able to find 404 not found pages/items… which is very strange because the items are in the store and aside from using Google’s 404 link, I cannot get the error message… lol.

You don’t need to touch the database, there’s a dedicated tool for deleting all orphan variations at once. You can find it in WooCommerce > Status > Tools.

Link to image: https://d.pr/i/yyUqjF

Let us know if you have any other questions. ??

Hi @babylon1999 ,

Something very strange is going on. I just did the test on one orphaned store item.

I deleted it and emptied the trash. My total and orphaned store items count dropped.

I then tried to perform this procedure https://woocommerce.com/document/product-csv-importer-exporter/#converting-existing-simple-product-to-variable-product

I copied/pasted the headers and one item from Excel to Google Sheets (to avoid the csv bug), and changed variable to simple (so I upload a simple item). I then re-uploaded the simple item created from Google sheets and it imports without any errors. Once uploaded, the new item is shown as Orphaned again.. :'(

Why oh why? ??

Here is a photo with the list of all of the headers present in my spreadsheet.
WordPress seems to detect them as valid… https://ibb.co/Mp9RJ35

I can imagine your frustration at this point. Before uploading, did you make sure there’s no parent product ID?

Link to image: https://d.pr/i/DWXrIW

Also, please try to exclude the custom metadata at the end of the import file.


Let us know how it goes! :?)

I am having a similar issue. I uploaded a csv with all of my products. Most of the products are variable products. When I upload the file the attributes came across, however the variations didn’t. We manually went in and created the variations for each product. The problem now is that every time we create a new product with variations it automatically becomes orphaned. I am very interested on the fix for your problem, to hopefully give insight to my issue.

Hi @mcewan980,

Sorry to hear that you are experiencing the same issue.

However, to align with forum best practices, please create a new topic so that we can address your issue(s) separately.

You can create a new thread here.

Thanks for understanding!