Export Error

@andrewwallis,

You can find how to show the console in Google for example.

In the case of Google Chrome: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/console/javascript/

@carazo thanks for that.

I ran the export again in Import and Export users & Customers and have taken a screenshot to show you the message I get along with the console display.

You can see the screenshot here – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lnVhemXohAGFBLrPA2_LfwdRKRIasXoA/view?usp=sharing

Can you guide me towards finding how to resolve the issue?

Thanks and best wishes

Andrew

Please expand it.

There is no usable info there.

You have to find something there about the error.

Maybe you have to enable debug in your server to be able to see something.

I’ve used this plugin many times before, but suddenly today I’m getting this exact same error and result. Using Plesk/LAMP servers – all very standard.
Any further ideas on this to share? There are no PHP errors on the server – only the one in the console which isn’t helpful at all.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by magestyx.

For testing, I just tried exporting only the Admin role since there’s less than 10 on the site, and the process started. However it started going through ‘approximately 549 steps’ – and slowly. Eventually the ‘Error thrown in the server’ showed again at “Step 499 of approximately 549 steps – 90%”.
What a bad time for this plugin to not work anymore. ??
I don’t remember there ever being so many steps – it’d simply output a CSV file.
I see a past post said something about a PHP8 error, but we’re on 7.4. On probably 15+ sites we’ve used this plugin on, this is the only time it’s ever failed.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by magestyx.

The only way I could get the exporting to work was to break it down into exporting much smaller segments of the users. Only one role at a time and only new ones for 1-2 months at a time. Took a ton of time but, fingers crossed, it finally seems to have worked.
On the import as well I had to manually break a number of the CSV files into multiple smaller pieces.

This is strange. The export is doing in an async way to avoid these problems.

Have you activated the error log in your WordPress to check which kind of error was being thrown by PHP?

I’m as newbie as OP @andrewwallis. I left this job running overnight – it looked like it would take 3-4 hours. This morning I found the same “Error thrown in server, we cannot continue.”

Oddly, when my computer first woke up today it showed Step 364 of 838 steps (43%) but when I came back to that tab a few minutes later it said it was over 90% when it stopped.

Does the plugin ever pop up a message or button that requires me to respond, or else it will time out and throw an error?

I too have no idea how to “check console.” Perhaps this plugin is only appropriate for users with a certain skill level? Help? I really want it to work!

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by epatientdave.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by epatientdave.

The plugin is designed for any level of user, but it is true that it is not normal that there are export errors and if there are, it is true that it is necessary to have certain knowledge to know what is producing them.

The errors are not related to the plugin, they can be caused by the hosting or by other plugins… that’s why it is useful to see the details of the errors but I tell you: it is normal that there are no errors and when there are, there is so much technical information that there is no error control as such because the casuistry is huge.

How many users are you exporting? This should be a fast operation so it has no sense that it takes so many time.

Thank you for your quick response!

I have 41,886 users, most of them spam – my current project is to get rid of all the spam users. I’m an example of someone who used WordPress with minimal intervention for many years, until I started needing to do things that caused problems.

Following @magestyx example, I just ran it again to export only Admins. It took 23 minutes and successfully exported the 12 admin users. (It still said 838 steps.)

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by epatientdave.

Surely the problem is the file. This is too big and when PHP tries to add new rows it fails.

You can ask your hosting about it.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by Javier Carazo.

Surely the problem is the file. This is too big?

I guess I was supposed to know that there’s a limit?? (I’m kind of annoyed at the time I spent investigating this)

Anyway I found other ways to get rid of most of the bad emails, and now it exports in just 2 minutes. So I’m closing out this issue. Thank you for providing this support.

There is no limits.

Here the limits are imposed by the hosting.

I was finally able to get the export working as well. I believe the limitation has to do with the number of steps involved combined with the number of users. I tested the export on an old version of the site we’re working on and also a new one. On both, we raised the server PHP/memory settings way up. The old site, being more complex (which is why we’re redoing it) had nearly 550 steps. The new, simpler site we were migrating to only had 250 or so. It never had an issue exporting. To finally get it to work, I had to export only one month of a time of users (according to registration date). In some cases, there were so many it’d still throw that error, so I had to export a single month and also export Subscribers separately, then Authors, etc.
Broken down to smaller segments, it still took a while with so many steps, but it did ultimately export. And the imports all went fine as usual.

Did you talk with your hosting to check which limit was the one who has problems?

I would like to know which is this to make possible to adjust in some way the process for these cases.