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Bulk Updating Entries

By: Greg Godwin | Asked: 10/03/2023
Forums › Category: General questions › Bulk Updating Entries
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Greg Godwin asked 10 months ago
Hello all, I've hit an unexpected problem and am hoping to get some help solving it. I run a website for a nonprofit, and I use two Formidable Forms forms in tandem to create the posts on the site. One form, the secondary one, is used to store contact information for people across different organizations. When creating an entry in the main form—the one that actually creates the posts on the site—its contact field draws from that secondary form and presents a list to choose from. So far, so good. Here's the issue: I have to change a couple of the email addresses in the secondary form. I did that, and then I went back to the main form. In the backend of the website, I filtered the list down to the entries on the main form that need to be updated. I exported them to a csv file, opened that, did a quick search and replace, and imported that csv back to the form. That worked, except that upon import, the photos that had been uploaded with the initial posts were deleted. I have tried changing several other settings, but to no avail. Does anyone have any insights on how to update form entries via a csv upload without deleting the attached files/images? Thanks in advance, Greg
Adam Fominaya replied 10 months ago

Oof. That sounds devastating. I suspect the photos are still in your wordpress media. If there's not many of them, you may be able to handle this manually. If there are many, you might wanna reach out to support to see if they can help.

Greg Godwin replied 10 months ago

Thankfully, I tested this on only a couple of the entries, so I was able to fix those manually. I'll reach out to support and see if they can help make updating the rest of the entries easier.

Greg Godwin replied 10 months ago

I reached out to support, and they were able to help me. I'll post the solution here in case anyone else runs into this same issue. Here's how to make sure that photos (or other files) in the original entries are not deleted upon bulk update via csv import:

1. **Before** exporting the entries to edit to a csv, turn off file protection in the Form Permissions section of the form's settings. (I think that this is where I ran into trouble. I turned off file protection after having exported the entries to a csv but before importing the edited csv. I needed to re-export the entries to a csv after turning off file protection. Once I did that, everything worked perfectly.)
2. At import, check the box to upload files.

That solved the problem. I was able to update 831 entries with a single csv upload. It took about ten minutes or so for the importer to process the updates, and when it was done, all entries were updated with their original pictures in place. Very pleased with how this turned out!

Victor Font replied 10 months ago

This is good information you’re sharing. Thank you! With your permission, I’d like to share it on https://formidable-mastermind.com and in the Formidable Masterminds Facebook group as well.

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