# How to restore avatars

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-restore-avatars/146353
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [March 31, 2020, 10:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-restore-avatars/146353 "2020-03-31T22:40:30Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![mattmon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mattmon/32/175049_2.png) [@mattmon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mattmon)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2020, 10:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-restore-avatars/146353/1 "2020-03-31T22:40:30Z")

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Is there a way to redownload the avatars provided by initial account creation?

For example, those that come from yahoo, gmail, etc?

All user have uploaded\_avatar\_id: nil

how can we get the avatar pictures back?

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### Author: ![simon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/simon/32/339122_2.png) [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2020, 5:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-restore-avatars/146353/2 "2020-04-01T17:11:09Z")

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> [@mattmon](#):
>
> All user have uploaded\_avatar\_id: nil
> 
> how can we get the avatar pictures back?

Do you have any idea how this happened? Did users lose their avatars after you updated Discourse?

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### Author: ![mattmon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mattmon/32/175049_2.png) [@mattmon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mattmon)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2020, 7:01pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-restore-avatars/146353/3 "2020-04-01T19:01:32Z")

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Thanks for following up…

I got this figured out, the problem was compound and partially self-inflicted 🤣

The first problem was that I had recently transitioned to a subdirectory deployment and had not [remapped all the necessary paths](https://meta.discourse.org/t/subfolder-support-with-docker/30507/102).

I had also rewritten uploaded\_avatar\_id to nil for each user in hope that would cause discourse to re-download the profile images. Obviously I was mistaken about that and ended up restoring the field from a backup 😳

The other problem was that avatars were not displayed to the left of topics in mobile view, this turned out to be [a bug in the events plugin](https://meta.discourse.org/t/avatars-missing-due-to-theme-or-plugin/146080/17).

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### Author: ![system](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/system/32/443519_2.png) [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2020, 7:01pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-restore-avatars/146353/4 "2020-05-01T19:01:34Z")

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