Does anyone know why I keep getting this error message when I try and edit more than about 60 topics at once. ‘‘Sorry, an error has occurred.’’ The only workaround is to edit a small number of topics at once - about 30. [11]

Thank you for your feedback @simon. I managed to delete the whole category successfully using ‘‘rake destroy:categories[…]’’

Thank you for the feedback, but is there a way to fix it?

Select less topics at once. I’d suggest keeping it to a about 50 per batch. If you need to bulk edit a very large number of topics, use of the rails console will be necessary. See Administrative Bulk Operations

I have thousands of topics in a category!

Then using the rails console is the best solution here. See the link above for bulk operations.

I can’t see an option to bulk delete all topics in a category?

The guide to delete all topics in a category is linked in the Destructive rake tasks section of the guide. [image] Bulk delete all topics in a category Self-Hosting bookmark This guide provides instructions on how to bulk delete all topics within a category on a self-hosted Discourse instance. person_raising_hand Required user level: System Administrator warning SSH access to your server is required Removing all topics from a category can be necessary for various reasons, such as reorganizing content or clearing outdated discussions. This guide walks you through the steps to accomplish this task safely on a self-hosted Discourse server. … As noted in that guide, please be sure to take a backup before running any destructive tasks like these in case something doesn’t go well.

Right, I’m getting somewhere. I have successfully bulk removed all topics in a category, but it’s not letting me delete the entire category now because it’s saying: ‘‘Can’t delete this category because topic count is 1.’’ As far as I can see, there are no topics. Any ideas? [23]

That’s odd. In that case, try deleting the category from the console. See Delete entire categories in the Bulk Operations topic for details.

A quick follow up @christian_01. In the future, please ask for help with what your real issue is - in this case deleting a category with topics in it - rather than what you’re trying to do to solve the issue. From what I gather, your ultimate goal is deleting a category with lots of topics in it. Had we know that from the beginning, I could’ve pointed you directly to the guide on deleting categories with topics. Instead, we ended up answering a number of other questions, which only got you part way to your goal. Please see XY problem The XY problem is a communication problem encountered in help desk, technical support, software engineering, or customer service situations where the question is about an end user's attempted solution (X) rather than the root problem itself (Y). The XY problem obscures the real issues and may even introduce secondary problems that lead to miscommunication, resource mismanagement, and sub-par solutions. The solution for the support personnel is to ask probing questions as to why the information i...

Error Message when editing large number of topics

Product Support

codinghorror (Jeff Atwood) October 31, 2019, 3:18am 2

It is a very expensive operation so it is timing out.

Topic		Replies	Views
I can't delete a category or topic description Product Support	27	2460	September 11, 2018
Cannot delete system created topic Product Support	13	1503	September 14, 2019
Can't delete this category because it has 1 topic Product Support	11	1412	February 2, 2021
The proper way to completely delete hundred of topics via rails? Product Support	10	5744	July 6, 2018
Bulk delete all topics in a category Self-Hosting how-to	0	6127	September 23, 2018

Error Message when editing large number of topics

Related topics