Product attributes : can’t edit (attribute number does not exist)

Hey there, @janice4summer! Thanks for contacting us. I’m happy to help you.

Your WooCommerce version is outdated, this might be causing conflicts. Specially if there are other outdated plugins or the theme that needs updating too.

We recommend keeping everything updated. Regularly updating everything helps maintain your site’s security, performance, and compatibility while ensuring you benefit from the latest features and improvements.

So please update everything and see if the issue persists.

If it does, please share with us the necessary information below for us to investigate the issue further:

System Status Report which you can find via WooCommerce > Status > Get system report > Copy for support.
Fatal error logs (if any) under WooCommerce > Status > Logs. Then you can use the selector to search for Fatal Errors.
You could copy and paste your reply here or paste it via https://gist.github.com/ and send the link here.

Looking forward to your reply.

Have a wonderful day!

Thanks Carol,

Everything is updated to the latest version: WordPress, Themes & Plugins. The only thing I can’t update is woocommerce 3.8.0, as updating will remove all my product attributes.

The bizarre thing is that the product attributes show correctly in the front-end, they are displayed in the back-end but editing them causes error “non-existant product attribute ID“.

When I clear the “transient cache”, or I update the woocommerce database, the product attributes are also disappearing… ??

This is the woocommerce status file:
https://gist.github.com/shaktimanpurush/c5750b750045af9cfdaec005856009d1

Hi there @janice4summer,

Thanks for sharing further details on this.

As a next step, I?would suggest you take a full backup of your site before making any changes. This will ensure that you can revert to the current state if anything goes wrong.

Next, you might want to run a conflict test, as the described issues are not the usual behavior of WooCommerce. To diagnose this, you could try deactivating all your plugins (except WooCommerce) and switching to a default theme like Storefront or Twenty Twenty-Four. If the problem disappears, reactivate each plugin one by one until you find the one causing the issue.

Let us know how this goes.

hi,

Unfortunaltely, disabling all plugins one by one, and using the default template, does not fix the issue.
After updating woocommerce plugin, all product attributes are gone …

I duplicated the site on a test sandbox environment to investigate. Can I give ou access to this ? Even if this dummy duplicated site crashes no problem, as the live site is not affected and on different url.

• This reply was modified 6 months, 3 weeks ago by janice4summer.

Hi again @janice4summer,

If I understand you correctly, you were able to run a conflict test, but this still did not get to solve the issue. In that case, could you please confirm that you were running a test using the latest version of WooCommerce? Also, what default theme did you use?

After updating woocommerce plugin, all product attributes are gone …

Were you able to also ensure that your database was running on the same version as your WooCommerce version? As a mismatch in the WooCommerce and Database version could lead to such errors.

I duplicated the site on a test sandbox environment to investigate. Can I give ou access to this ? Even if this dummy duplicated site crashes no problem, as the live site is not affected and on different ur

I’m afraid we do not accept sharing of credentials even for staging sites through this forum, as it is a public forum accessible to all internet users.

In that case, we will only help troubleshoot by providing different steps to try on your staging site to see if we can solve this issue together.

hi,

I used the older woocommerce plugin 3.8.0, with all other plugins disabled, and default storefront theme. Updating woocommerce always causes the product attributes to disappear.
Shortly after the updates they are still there, but when the “woocommerce database update” has run automatically, all product attribtes are gone.

What’s bizarre: When I clear the transient cache, even with the same Woocommerce version, so without updating, the product attributes are missing afterwards!

The woocommerce 7.8.0 version matches the woocommerce database version on woo > status tools.
Should I do a database update first, and then try updating ?
Are there other possible things that might cause those product attributes to disappear ?

thank you

Hi there @janice4summer,

I used the older woocommerce plugin 3.8.0, with all other plugins disabled, and default storefront theme.?Updating woocommerce always causes the product attributes to disappear.

May we know why you would use a very old version of WooCommerce to run conflict tests? As the latest and most recent version is Version 8.8.3, if you would like to test with a previous version it would be advisable to test using Version 8.7.0. Please try that version and let us know if that makes any difference. Testing with any older version later than 2024 will not yield the correct results.

The?woocommerce?7.8.0 version?matches?the woocommerce?database version?on woo > status tools.
Should I do a database update first, and then try updating ?

Could you please try manually updating your WooCommerce plugin files by extracting version 8.7.0 and pasting the files from the extract through an FTP to your WooCommerce plugin files in your store, this will automatically update your WooCommerce version to version 8.7.0, then, you can trigger the database update by heading over to WooCommerce > Tools > Update Database?

Once the database is updated, you can then head back to WooCommerce > Tools and Regenerate the product attributes lookup table.

Are there other possible things that might cause those product attributes to disappear ?

It is unusual that even with only WooCommerce as the active plugin these attributes are not showing as in most cases, plugin/theme conflicts make them disappear.

Please try the aforementioned steps and let us know if you need further assistance or have any questions.

thank you @ckadenge !

I have default theme, with only Woocommerce 7.8.0 activated. Even just deactivating woocommerce, and re-activating makes product attributes disappear.

So this is not a plugin conflict, but more like a woocommerce database issue.

Regenerate product look-up tabel has no effect at all.

When I click on any product attribute to edit it, I get this error message:

Error: non-existing attribute ID.

… but when I click on “configure terms” I can edit them!

When I click “verify or even just update database”, all product attributes are gone missing.

So do you have any ideas how to fix this woocommerce database issue please ?

• This reply was modified 6 months, 3 weeks ago by janice4summer.
• This reply was modified 6 months, 3 weeks ago by janice4summer.

Hello janice4summer

Thank you for your reply.

To help resolve this issue, the best approach would be to recreate this issue on my end.
I will need the following items to do that:
– Go to All Products and then export the products into a CSV file. Then share the CSV with me
– Share the latest System Status Report.

Additionally, could you share a screenshot of this error:
Error: non-existing attribute ID.

When you say “But when I click on “configure terms” I can edit them”.
Could you clarify where exactly are you clicking?
Sharing a screenshot will be helpful.

Looking forward to your response. ??

Best regards.

hi,

“Non-existing product ID error” when clicking on product attributes > attribute NAME > edit:
https://imgur.com/a/IO0GFf8

When I click on product > attributes > configure terms: I can ONLY edit the ATTRIBUTE TERMS, but NOT the ATTRIBUTE NAME (gives non-existing ID error):
https://imgur.com/a/Jgx26tg

Here you have the status: https://gist.github.com/shaktimanpurush/b8c5737ba18627b5eb6aa426edbe235a

The products I can’t put here for privacy concerns. Can I export an anonimzed part of the database instead ?

Is it possible that a table is missing or corrupt in the database that causes this strange behavior ?

• This reply was modified 6 months, 2 weeks ago by janice4summer.

hi @doublezed2

Here you have the woocommerce product export. Hope you can find what’s causing this bug in my installation … (I copied the CSV content into this Gist Txtx)

https://gist.github.com/shaktimanpurush/34c9f5e5f786c01a5469af68890f4efb#file-gistfile1-txt

thanks

?? hey @janice4summer

Thank you for reaching back, with further details on this.

To clarify, how were said product attributes created in the first place? Using the default WooCommerce functionality, or otherwise?

A few things I noticed, while investigating the provided System Status Report (SSR), from May 13:

• Server resources are configured lower (eg PHP Version, PHP Post Max Size, PHP Time Limit: 120, PHP Max Input Vars)
• Both the WooCommerce, and its database, version is at 7.8.0
• 30 plugins active
• A 3rd party theme active

As a next step, kindly go ahead with creating a fresh/empty/new site, on your local machine for simplicity (linked here is a tool for doing so), and test with the following:

• The latest version of WordPress
• Your preferred version of PHP 8 (7.4 is also fine)
• The latest version of WooCommerce
• Only WooCommerce installed, and activated, along with a default theme, like TT3

In that fresh installation, go ahead with importing the XML file that will be downloaded when selecting All content, from the screen at WP Admin > Tools > Export.

I hope that helps! Let us know how it goes.

hi,

I followed your steps, and imported it into a test site. When I go to products > attributes > edit: I am able to edit them without that error ““Non-existing product ID error”.

I think I’m kind of a genius: I noticed that in my imported test site, this database table contains all attributes correctly:
woocommerce_attribute_taxonomies

On the original website, that database table is empty! So this clears up the issue why clearing the transient cache deleted all attributes: they are not correctly saved in the database, but somewhere in-between …

So would the solution be that I export this database table with phpmyadmin directly into the live website ? I don’t think it will work, as the table row ID’s are different for each attribute…

Or is there another safe option here to really have this table build up correctly again ?

I think we are getting to the solution, thank you for your help!

p.s.: mine is not an isolated issue, I read lots of people suffering from this, for example:
https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/issues/37761
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/product-attributes-disappeared-after-last-update-already-bug-fixed-no-luck/

• This reply was modified 6 months, 1 week ago by janice4summer.
• This reply was modified 6 months, 1 week ago by janice4summer.

?? hello again @janice4summer

I followed your steps, and imported it into a test site. When I go to products > attributes > edit: I am able to edit them without that error ““Non-existing product ID error”.

That’s great to hear! Thanks for letting us know.

So would the solution be that I export this database table with phpmyadmin directly into the live website ? I don’t think it will work, as the table row ID’s are different for each attribute…

Feel free to use the tools you’re comfortable with, while also making sure a backup is always available before making any changes.

I’d recommend utilizing a better suited tool, like Jetpack VaultPress Backup (linked here), instead. Also, it currently has a 14-day trial period.

This bit of documentation can also prove to be helpful.

p.s.: mine is not an isolated issue, I read lots of people suffering from this

The reports relate to older versions of WooCommerce, and the issues there are already fixed since version 7.7.0, with the most recent version (at the time of writing this) being version 8.9.1.

I hope this is helpful! Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.
We will be happy to help you further.

hi @anastas10s,

The attributes are somewhere in the database. Otherwise they wouldn’t show in the back-end & front-end.
Only after clearing the transients, updating woocommerce, updating woo database, they disappear.

So they are in the database. Do you now of a function, a PHP script of SQL command to get them into the (currently empty) woocommerce_attribute_taxonomies table ?

I fear that the XML export into another installation, and then copy that database table into the live site will give errors, as it will have other ID’s and SQL metrics.

thank you !