Delete action scheduler database tables

Update: there was a check box to also delete database tables, except the 4 action scheduler tables put there by WPForms are still at the top of the database. However, if I now remove them myself, other things break. I do have one site that has never had WPForms installed and it works fine without the action scheduler tables.

So no big deal, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on here.

Hi @sean-h,

Currently we don’t have a built-in option to remove the Action Scheduler tables from the database, and we’ll be looking into possible options for doing this in the future.

As there are other plugins other than WPForms Lite that uses Action Scheduler, so you might want to check for that before removing the tables manually.

Hope this helps!

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Ethan Choi.

HI @ethanchoi,

Thanks for getting back to me.

For the record, I have already given a 5 star review for WPForms, and that still stands, but seeing as my theme has since added reCaptcha v3 support to the built in contact form, I guess I’m just doing some spring cleaning, so to speak.

Now I just ran another experiment on a site that never had WPForms, there were no Action Scheduler tables in the database. I installed WP Forms and the 4 tables now appeared. I then immediately deleted the plugin, and then manually dropped the 4 action scheduler tables. The site kept on running fine, except when I tried to re-install WP Forms the entire site now crashed with a critical error as I clicked ‘Activate’. The only fix for that was to go into my hosting account and restore the entire database for that site from a backup that was taken right after I first installed WP Forms, which now put the 4 action scheduler tables back. Also, before I deleted WPForms, I checked the box to remove all data and settings. When I now go to the plugins page and after deactivating, when I then click on delete I get another error that says delete failed. I click again, and the plugin is now successfully deleted.

Sorry, I have some time on my hands right now and maybe I’m nitpicking, but I thought I’d put this out there anyway.

Thanks again for the help ??

Hi @sean-h,

Thanks for the feedback!

In our next release we plan to include a check for the Action Scheduler tables, and to include the ability to regenerate the Action Scheduler tables (for sites that do not have those tables), so the ‘critical error’ issue you’ve encountered should no longer occur then.

Hope this information helps ??

Hi @ethanchoi,

It helps, thanks!

I actually still have WP Mail SMTP on all my sites. When I ran the last SMTP update, the SMTP plugin now generated Action Scheduler tables on the sites that never had them. It would appear you have just implemented A S with the last SMTP update? But, there was one site that had WP Forms, which I have since deleted and then manually removed the Action Scheduler tables from. That was a while ago, and things kept working, until I tried to update the SMTP plugin, critical error, site down.

In other words, it would seem if the Action Scheduler tables were never there, both the SMTP and Forms plugin will create them. But if you delete the plugins and the tables and then try put either of those plugins back, or update them, the whole site crashes.

Hope you can make some sense of this post ??

Hi @sean-h,

Thanks for the details! We’ll be making improvements to for handling the Action Scheduler library soon.

In the meantime, if you need a fix for the issues you’ve described, you can try the following steps:

1. Go to this page to download the latest version of the Action Scheduler plugin by clicking on the “Source code (zip)” link.

2. Deactivate WPForms Lite/WP Mail SMTP plugin.

3. Install and activate the downloaded Action Scheduler zip in WordPress > Plugins.

4. Go to Tools > Scheduled Actions or use the wp-admin/tools.php?page=action-scheduler URL. The Action Scheduler plugin will detect issues with database tables and will re-create them.

5. You can check that the tables are created by reloading the Action Scheduler admin area until an error notice is no longer displayed.

6. When no errors on Action Scheduler admin page is displayed, the Action Scheduler plugin can be deactivated and WPForms Lite plugin can be activated again.

Thanks!