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Newsletter items 'gone' after removing category

Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 2:11 pm
by mckellsl
I had created a category 'Everyone', and put a number of articles in that category. But, I noticed that an existing category of 'All' was there, so I figured I didn't need my 'Everyone' one, so I deleted it. Now I don't see the articles I created - where did they go??!! How can I get them back and show up?

Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 2:23 pm
by aebrown
mckellsl wrote:I had created a category 'Everyone', and put a number of articles in that category. But, I noticed that an existing category of 'All' was there, so I figured I didn't need my 'Everyone' one, so I deleted it. Now I don't see the articles I created - where did they go??!! How can I get them back and show up?
When you delete a category that contains at least one article, you are prompted to specify what category those articles should be reassigned to. I have tested this, and it seems to work just fine. You really shouldn't be able to delete a category without specifying a new destination category.

So the articles should still exist, even if you don't recall which category you assigned them to as you deleted their original category. You can always view the "All" category (which is not really a category per se, but rather a viewing option that shows all articles regardless of their category). You may have to look through several pages to find your articles (when you view articles you only see 5 at a time); use the "1 2 3 ... NEXT" controls at the bottom left of the page to move between groups of 5 articles.

Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 2:48 pm
by mckellsl
Thanks for your response.
I deleted the category w/o assigning the articles to any other category, so now I guess they are in limbo-land, or are they just totally gone? how can I get them back?
There were only about 5 articles involved, and we don't have more than 1 page so far, so 'scrolling' thru pages isn't an issue.

Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 3:37 pm
by aebrown
mckellsl wrote:Thanks for your response.
I deleted the category w/o assigning the articles to any other category, so now I guess they are in limbo-land, or are they just totally gone? how can I get them back?
There were only about 5 articles involved, and we don't have more than 1 page so far, so 'scrolling' thru pages isn't an issue.
I just did some further testing, and as near as I can tell, the news for you is rather sad. If you don't select another category when prompted, but simply click YES in response to the "Are you sure?" prompt, it looks like the articles are simply deleted.

I guess that could be considered a handy way to delete a whole set of articles. For example, say you have a set of articles about an upcoming youth conference, all in a "YOUTH CONFERENCE 2012" category. Then when the conference is over, you just want to delete the category and all the articles in it. Easy. But it is a rather drastic result, and it isn't immediately obvious that the act of deleting a category will delete all the articles in that category (or at least all the articles which have only that one category assigned to them -- articles can have more than one category).

In any case, the articles seem to be gone, and there's no way I can find to recover them. As a very long shot I even tried creating a category with the exact same name, but as I expected, it must have a different internal ID from the first category of that name, and I'm quite sure the articles were deleted anyway -- they weren't just in limbo.

Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 5:17 pm
by mckellsl
ah well, at least there weren't very many - now we know.
I suppose it would be good if the app developers would put in a bigger warning and 'Are you sure?' msg stating this is what will happen.
thanks again for checking!