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Undoing a successful import

When you use Content Porter, you may have times where you want to undo a successful import of content items into a Content Manager instance.

Before you begin

To perform a successful undo, the following must be the case:

  • You must have created an Undo Package for the import you want to undo
  • You must be logged in, either as an administrator user, or as the user who performed the import that produced the Undo Package.
  • The items that were imported must not have been modified, deleted, published, rolled back, or unlocalized after the import was performed.
  • The items that were imported must not be in use (checked out or in workflow) during the undo process.

About this task

You may want to undo a successful import of content items into a Content Manager instance in, for example, the following situations:

  • You may be importing the same items into multiple Content Manager instances, one of which has failed. If this happens, you may want to undo the successful imports into the other instances.
  • You accidentally chose the wrong import settings file, and imported the wrong items by mistake. In this case, too, you will want to undo your import.

By performing an undo, you tell Content Porter to:

  • delete items that were created during the import
  • replace updated items to the version of the item that existed before the import
  • roll back and unlocalize items that were localized during the import
  • revoke any application data that was imported.

Procedure

  1. In the Windows Start menu, navigate to the Programs group SDL Group, open it and select Tridion Sites Content Porter.
    The initial screen of Content Porter client appears.
  2. Select Start undo wizard and click Next.

    The next wizard step, Select a Content Manager, appears.

  3. In the list that appears, select the Content Manager instance for which you want to undo an import, and click Next. If the list does not contain the Content Manager instance you are looking for, click Add and fill in the properties of that Content Manager instance in the dialog that appears. Then click OK to add this instance to the list, and select it. Then click Next.
    If you are prompted for a user name and password, log in as the user who performed the import you want to undo, or as an administrator user.

    The next wizard step, Select Undo Package, appears, showing a list of Undo Packages.

  4. Select the import you wish to undo. You can identify a specific import by its creation time, the user who performed the import, the number of items, and the description (filled in during import). Then click Next.
    The next wizard step, Select Options, appears.
  5. Only when undoing an import into Content Manager of SDL Tridion 2013 SP1 or later, in the Select Options screen, the option Detect if imported items were modified after import is selected by default. With this option selected, undo fails if an item is found to have been modified after the import, because the undo would then not only undo the import, but also the modifications made by users after the import. If you want to undo items regardless, clear this option. Then click Next.

    The next wizard step, Summary, appears.

  6. In the Summary step, verify the settings of the undo process and, if you wish to reuse this Undo, click Save Configuration. Then click Next.

    The Undo Progress step appears and Content Porter performs the undo non-interactively. The undo process aborts if it encounters an error. When the undo process is finished, the Undo Result step appears.

  7. Click Finish to exit the wizard.
    The Content Porter initial screen appears.

Results

If the undo is successful, Content Porter does the following:
  • Content Porter undoes all changes made to the Content Manager instance by this specific import.
  • Content Porter removes the Undo Package from the server.