Undoing an import into SDL Tridion 2013 Content Manager or older
After you have successfully performed an import, you have the option to undo the import.
Undoing an import may be necessary in situations like the following:
- You performed the import by reusing a previously saved file with import settings, and accidentally selected the wrong file.
- You are importing the same intermediate package to multiple Content Manager instances, and one of the imports fails. You now want to undo all the successful imports into all the other Content Manager instances.
An undo will fail if one of the import items, or items dependent on it, have changed on the Content Manager instance after the import. The following rules of thumb are most important to remember when considering an undo:
- The longer ago the import took place, the less likely it is that the undo will succeed.
- The more users are working on the Content Manager, the less likely it is that the undo will succeed.
- The more imports have been performed after the import you want to undo, the less likely it is that the undo will succeed.
An undo consists of the following operations:
- Deleting any item that was created during the import.
- Rolling back any versioned item that was updated (such as Components, Pages, Templates etc) to the pre-import version.
- Restoring any non-versioned item that was updated (such as Folders, Publications, etc) to the pre-import version by restoring a saved backup of the file from the Undo Package.
- Unlocalizing any item that was localized as part of the import.
Whether an undo succeeds depends on the ability to return the Content Manager instance to a consistent state. Undo is a transactional operation, which means that one inconsistency causes the entire undo to fail. The following things cause an undo operation to fail:
- All undo operations fail if:
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- The item changed since the import
- The imported item no longer exists
- The item is in use (checked out or in workflow)
- The item was published since the import
- Deleting an item fails if:
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- There are other items referring to any version of the item
- The item has been localized in a child Publication since the import
- You have no rights to delete the item
- Restoring a non-versioned item fails if:
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- The item was unlocalized since the import
- The backed-up version refers to items that no longer exist
- The backed-up version would create a uniqueness conflict (e.g. its name is the name of a new item that was created in the same location after the import)
- The backed-up version is based on a Schema that is not the linked Schema that was set for the containing folder after the import
- The item to restore is in use in workflow (if the item to restore is a Workflow Process Definition)
- Unlocalizing an item fails if:
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- The item was already unlocalized after the import
- Unlocalizing the item would create a uniqueness conflict
- Unlocalizing the item would give it a Schema that is not the linked Schema that was set for the containing folder after the import.
The undo will fail as soon as any of the above conditions hold.