Undo conversion from topic to PM as a moderator?

Recently made a moderator on my forum, I mistakenly converted a topic I was trying to moderate into a private message thread, and now none of us moderators can find it to restore the topic.

The action does not appear in the moderation log, no one appears to have access to the topic. I would have expected to have acess, either as the moderator who took the action, or as a member who posted several times in that topic. Apparently, not even the member who created the topic can find it.

Do I understand correctly that an owner or an admin could fix this? Is it relevant that within half an hour of my error, the forum was migrated to a new server?

Moderators don’t have access to PMs unless they are flagged.

So now the only people who have access to the PM are

  • the people in the PM (the original participants in the topic)
  • admins

You’ll need an admin at this point, or you could get one of the participants to flag the PM. As long as the flag is active you’ll have access.

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As I mentioned I was one of the participants in the topic. Shouldn’t I be able to see it for that reason alone?

In any case, looks like I’ll be hunting down an admin! Thanks for the help.

You actually posted in the topic before it was converted to a PM? Then yeah you should have access.

Well, that’s what I thought . . . fortunately the forum owners are both programmers, I’m sure they can sort it out when they have time.

As long as they know who was involved in the topic they can easily locate it within the UI and convert it back. No ferreting around in the database or anything like that required.

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That’s helpful. We have several user names and also the topic number, so I guess we’re okay, once the bosses have a moment for it. (We are still coping with the aftermath of changing servers.)