how to merge posts from pruned database?
 

my vbulletin mysql database was backed up a month ago. Then a week later an admin pruned a lot of posts, we did not find out this until today. So the question is how can I import/merge the posts from the very old database to bring back all the pruned posts?

thanks.

The only way to do so would be to use ImpEx:

- Restore the backup into a new database.
- Install a second copy of vBulletin as a testsite and connect to the restored database.
- Clean (delete) all information you do not want to import
- Use ImpEx to merge the cleaned backup database into your production database.

PS This might cause problems with ImpEx restoring the threads into new forums, but that is something you can repair afterwards.

Try this on a testboard first!!!

thanks for your reply. The "Clean (delete) all information you do not want to import" is to clean from myadmin/mysql or to clean from the vbulletin itself? When I tried from the ImpexEx it looks like the process is sequencial (dependant) operation. You have to import the users, the forums before you import the posts. What I really want to import is the posts.

Cleaning should be done using the regular tools vBulletin offers, not in a tool like phpMyAdmin.

Yes ImpEx is sequential, but it will merge useraccounts if the username and email address matches, so you should not get many duplicate users (only if they changed name or email address since the backup was made.

You will get new usergroups/forums, but it should be a few minutes work to merge these with the existing ones.