# Sidebar default categories applied historically, but no change

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/sidebar-default-categories-applied-historically-but-no-change/254067
**Category:** Support
**Tags:** sidebar
**Created:** [February 4, 2023, 5:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/sidebar-default-categories-applied-historically-but-no-change/254067 "2023-02-04T17:46:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![rahim123](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df705f/32.png) [@rahim123](https://meta.discourse.org/u/rahim123)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2023, 5:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/sidebar-default-categories-applied-historically-but-no-change/254067/1 "2023-02-04T17:46:03Z")

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Hi there, I’m trying to set the default sidebar categories for all users:

 ![Screenshot from 2023-02-04 12-41-25](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/d/d/3/dd3e369918b5486a2d94af90e6bde275df77882c.png)

However, despite selecting **Yes** both of my normal user test accounts have a different set of sidebar categories. On at least one of them I’m sure I never manually changed the preferences for the user.

For anonymous visitors and for my admin account is does show the correct sidebar categories.

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### Author: ![JammyDodger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/jammydodger/32/254611_2.png) [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2023, 7:01pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/sidebar-default-categories-applied-historically-but-no-change/254067/2 "2023-02-04T19:01:10Z")

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This was mentioned the other day too - [Sidebar question about Admins configuring defaults for visitors and new members](https://meta.discourse.org/t/sidebar-question-about-admins-configuring-defaults-for-visitors-and-new-members/253433)

I gave it a run-through and it seemed to work okay on my test site, and I’ve not been able to repro it so far to track it down further.

As the background jobs can take a while to run for everyone, it’s set up to change admin and anon first I think. If you have a lot of users it may take a while for the changes to work their way through everyone. (🤞)

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### Author: ![rahim123](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df705f/32.png) [@rahim123](https://meta.discourse.org/u/rahim123)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2023, 7:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/sidebar-default-categories-applied-historically-but-no-change/254067/3 "2023-02-04T19:07:42Z")

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Thanks @JammyDodger for looking into it!  
Since this is an import test I wonder if the Sidekiq jobs got stopped abnormally at some point. I don’t have any jobs queued anymore.

Related?

> [@How to restart Sidekiq jobs after import](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-restart-sidekiq-jobs-after-import/155133):
>
> We moved from phpBB today and as we used a bigger server for the import process we quickly created a backup in Discourse to move over to the live server. It looks like this has caused some jobs to cancel that usually run after the import (from test imports i noticed that sidekiq was busy for an hour or so after import). Is there a way to trigger the same jobs again? I do see some weirdos like an empty user list which I think is just something that needs to run the relevant job. I couldn’t find…