Plug-in does strange things to the Admin area

How do I install an older version without deleting this bad one and losing my settings?

@gr8fl
Not difficult.
Leave everything as it is in WordPress admin…
Go to your hosting file manager and find directory /wp-content/plugins/ and look for the wordpress-seo plugin folder

Delete the plugin folder from the file manager..

Download an older version of WordPress SEO from here https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wordpress-seo/developers/ to your PC (I suggest version 1.5.5.3 – it’s the version I’ve reverted to using after every recent update, and seems to have the least issues)

Go back to WordPress admin and go to plugins – Add New
upload the plugin – You’ll see options at the top of the installer page e.g.
Search | Upload | Featured | etc

After it uploads, you need to reactivate the plugin
I’ve done this so often with this plugin on a number of sites and haven’t yet lost any settings (hopefully there’s not going to be a first time)

@mikeotgaar

This is much easier than extracting the zip file, then FTP’ing the folder with same name (wordpress-seo) to overwrite files and then praying if it works.

I just tried your suggestion and it worked great!! Now, the only annoyance which I will put up with are the messages the SEO plugin is out of date.

BTW – Google Analytics by Yoast also messes things up. I don’t need it enough to deal with the hassle.

Any other updates will first be done on test sites.

Thank you.

Always good to test first ??
Agree – FTPing all the files is a pain
There’s a plugin to block the update notification nag “Plugin Update Hider” which works most of the time… it’s a bit unreliable since WP 3.9
I mostly just edit the file version of plugins I don’t want update notices for, and set it to a much higher number…. One of those not-recommended “Don’t Do As I Do” things…

GA plugin – Also seen some problems – I prefer to just add the tracking code in theme footer.php anyway

Thank you so much for all your help @mikeotgaar. I will monitor this area for suggestion when a more stable version of Yoast SEO comes out, and then only on a test site will it be installed at first.