CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I am not sure where to post this, please feel free to relocate as appropriate.

I have just made a real mess of the registrations for our conference and I am hoping someone can help me solve the problem.

When I was setting up the price set for the event I only included the early-bird price fields.  When I wanted to add the non-early-bird prices I didn't seem to be able to edit the price set whilst it was in use, so I decided to copy the set and change the prices in the applicable price fields (3 price fields needed changing 5 stayed the same).   As I had done with the previous event we ran, I just switched price sets at the appropriate time.

Everything seemed to be fine and dandy until I tried to run the custom search Price Set Details for Event Participants.  (I didn't need this for the last event.) Of course I get the error Database Error Code: Unknown column 'price_field_209' in 'field list', 1054. 

I understand why - I may have given the options the same titles as before but they actual have different price option IDs.  Now I need to fix the problem as I need the Price set details to work out totals in each session for room allocation, catering etc.

I had 515 registrations at the early-bird rates and 15 at the standard rate, so my plan was:

• cancel the 15 standard registrations
• add the standard price fields and options to the original price set, set the expires on/valid from dates and adjust admin/public viewing as necessary
• re-register the 15 people using the old (now modified) price set.

Unfortunately this doesn't work. Now I get a error message of Unknown column 'price_field_411' in 'field list'.


Again I think I know what is happening.  I had hoped that the custom search Price Set Details for Event Participants would ignore the registrations that were cancelled, because they aren't included in the export results, but it doesn't.

I think I could solve the custom search error by deleting rather than cancelling those 15 registrations, BUT, then I lose the contribution information associated with those registrations.

So, where to from here?  It seems to me the best way to go is to delve directly into the database.  Not something I like doing - particularly as I won't be doing it myself. Our civicrm is hosted on a shared server and I don't have access directly to the database, but I will hopefully be able to get the hosting company to do the delving.

I have looked at the database on the local install on my home computer. I think most of what I want to achieve can be done by altering the civicrm_participant_payment table. I would need to replace the particpant IDs for the 15 'bad' registrations I want to delete with the particpant IDs for the 15 new 'good' registrations I will have created.  Then I could delete the 15 'bad' registrations through civicrm.  I think this will leave the contribution information as is.

However, I my knowledge of civicrm is very very  limited. (Obviously - or I wouldn't be in this mess in the first place!)  I would (and indeed have) delve(d) into the MSSQL database that our current IMIS CRM uses, but we are only just getting started with civiCRM (only using it for event registrations so far) and I am still working out how it fits together.

Any advice/comments/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Lobo.  I'll be contacting our hosting company on Monday to try to get the problem sorted.