Troubleshooting Web App Imports

[mario_gudelj]

This article has been ported to Troubleshooting Web App Imports

Resolving issues with inactive Web App items

Summary:

If you've imported a Web App and some items are missing when you preview the page, check to see if the items have (Inactive) set next to their name in the back-end system.

Issue:

If a Web App's items are inactive, they do not appear and seem to be missing. This occurs because of the item's detail settings, specifically the release date and the expiration date. If the release date is set to some future date or if the expiration date is in the past, the item will be inactive.

Reason:

In Excel, the column where you enter an expiration date of 1/1/9999 (to avoid an item from expiring), is automatically truncated and re-formatted to 01-Jan-99. When you import the web app items into the system, the data is reset to the year 1999.

Solution:

Highlight the expiration column in Excel and set its type to text. Type in 01-Jan-9999, copy the cell, paste the date into the other cells and re-import it. Now, all of the Web App items will not expire until 01-Jan-3000. This resolves the missing items issue. This setting ensures that you'll have no inactive items upon adding or updating data with Excel.

[amosweb]

Great help dude saved me a nights worth of work!

[rapidlaunch]

Same here! Thank you!

[Caz000]

Thxs mario_gudel   its so easy when you know how a!!!!!!!

[Grovehouse]

I followed the advice here and still the imported items are all showing 'inactive'. I noticed someone else had the same issue and they said that the next day the items were all magically 'active'. I can make the items active by manually changing the 'release' date to a date in the past, which, curiously, is somehow defaulting to the CREATION date (which is todays date), and overwriting my desired 'Release date'during the import procedure. The moment the day changes at midnight - hey presto, active items.  Is there a way to force the creation date to be a day prior to the actual import date? This looks like it will solve my issue, or stopping the Creation Date from over ruling my Release Date setting?