File attachment lost during merging of records

Question

i encountered a situation that when I merge 2 similar records, i would get an error with the duplicate record has a file attachment. The records will remain but the duplicate record would have lost its file attachment. This would not happen if I flip the 2 records and have the record that has the file attachment be the main record instead. If I merge it this time, the file attachment stays without any error as expected.

Would this be a bug ? Also, in the case where the file attachment is lost in the error, would the file attachment be still inside the database and how can that be located ?

I am on CIVICRM 5.10.4 Wordpress 5.0.3

thanks.

Answer 1

When you did the merge, did you select the Check box between the 2 contacts for that row of data? It is between == ==> If you do not check that, it will not merge that data over.

Where to find the file? Go to Admin > System Settings > Directories and you will see the path for Custom Files Directory

Answer 2

What you describe sounds like this bug https://lab.civicrm.org/dev/core/issues/723

File custom fields cause a fatal error when trying to merge If you are trying to merge a contact with a custom field that is a file, if the contact that will be deleted is passing a file to the remain contact, the merge will fail, generate a fatal error, and lose all the custom data in the set including the file.

To recreate:

Create a contact custom field that accepts a file. Add files to one or two contact records. Merge a contact with a file into another contact Fatal Error occurs. All files are no longer attached to the custom fields. The contact to be deleted loses all the custom fields. While the remaining contact looses only the file. If the contact that is to remain has no image the error message is

No record found for given file ID - 0 and entity ID - 203

I'm also seeing this in CiviCRM 5.10.3. So I would say this is a known bug which has not yet been fixed.