Here are some possible solutions to make a missing column appear:
1- Automatic detection: make sure at least one post is using the field
Go to the normal editor and edit one item, and fill all the fields.
After that, go to our spreadsheet > settings > scan db.
Our spreadsheet will find it automatically and create the columns. You might want to run this scan 3-5 times as our spreadsheet searches for the missing fields in batches.
2- Maybe the column was deleted
Go to the spreadsheet > columns manager (top toolbar), and at the bottom of the popup, you’ll see the option to restore deleted columns.
3- Maybe the column is deactivated
Go to the spreadsheet > columns manager (top toolbar), and check the list of deactivated columns. If you find the column there, you can move to the left side to activate it.
4- Maybe the column is available but you can’t find it because it has a different name.
- The solution is to enable all the columns in the columns manager
- Edit one item in the normal editor and set a very unique value like “99999999”
- Open our spreadsheet
- Use the cell locator in the toolbar to find any cell containing the value “99999999” (do not confuse the cell locator with the columns locator)
- After this, you will find the column with the value and you can right-click on the column > rename, to set a friendly name
5- Maybe you reached the columns limit
By default, we limit the spreadsheet to 300 columns for performance reasons. Some websites have thousands of fields and the spreadsheet would be slow if we display thousands of columns.
In this case, you can go to the spreadsheet > settings > scan DB. You can use the option multiple times.
Every time you scan the database to find more columns, it will scan 300 additional fields. So 5 uses mean 1500 new fields.
Another way to increase the limit is: go to the spreadsheet > settings > advanced settings > solution to weird errors > columns limit.
6- Maybe this is a serialized field and the support for serialized fields is disabled
The spreadsheet supports serialized fields automatically, but we have the advanced option to deactivate it.
You can go to the spreadsheet > settings > advanced settings > customize feature > deactivate support for serialized fields.
Make sure the option is unchecked, so the serialized fields are supported.
7- You can reset the settings
Go to the spreadsheet > settings > advanced settings > reset settings.
This will reset all the settings and generate the columns again. This is safe because it will reset the spreadsheet settings only and your data will not be changed.
8- Maybe the field is saved outside the context of the post/user/term
If you are editing posts in our spreadsheet. Our spreadsheet will read the post information from the standard database tables: wp_posts, wp_postmeta, and taxonomies.
If you are using the “users spreadsheet”, the spreadsheet will read the information from the standard wp_users and wp_usermeta tables.
If you are using the “taxonomy terms spreadsheet”, it will read the fields from the standard wp_terms, wp_term_relationships, wp_term_taxonomy, wp_termmeta
If you followed all the previous solutions and the field is missing, maybe the field was added by another plugin and the third-party plugin saves the field in a custom database table.
In that case, the field is outside the reach of our spreadsheet editor and the only way to edit the field is through a custom extension.
We can create the custom extension for you and you can contact us to get a quote.
Note: There might be a possibility that the spreadsheet is not recognizing the column automatically. You could try creating a custom column following this guide