[Not a Bug] Product Descriptions blank in admin sometimes

I did a search for this, but could not find anyone else with the same problem. So it may not be a bug.

I am using the same editors as with previous versions, and I did a clean install on two sites. We are on the recently released, 1.5 final version now. A lot of items that we go to edit have a blank product description. But on the live site, they are all there.

If the description is saved, then it reflects as blank on the live site in turn. But some items show up fine when being editied, and they show up the same on the live site itself.

Is there some kind of screening process in the 1.5 version? I know some of our html may not be the best with some listings, but we never experienced this before with 1.39 and earlier.

I am so grateful for any help with this, we have been having it occur for about a month since the release candidate we tried.

Many thanks in advance.

You might check post #6 of this thread to see if your php version is part of the problem:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=153143

Thanks for your reply Linda. Both sites are PHP 5.2.17 and on different servers, but I tried the thread post you recommended. It still does the same thing I'm afraid. I made the correct changes to the files mentioned. Would I need to change the UTF-8 setting as I saw in the docs somewhere? There are no special characters on the actual item pages though.

I am also having the same problem. In admin in some categories the product description is there and in other categories it is missing. However, the description appears in the store. I upgraded from 1.39 to 1.5 and followed the installation instructions step by step.

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Hello,
I just figured out why this is happening. The product description does not show in any product listing that has stock by attributes associated with it.

I was unable to install the stock by attributes add-on to version 1.5 and have just learned from a different post that stock by attributes add-on has not been updated to accommodate the change.

Unfortunately, my only option is to roll back to 1.39 and wait for the stock by attributes add-on to be updated for 1.5

Just to update on our stores, we are not using attributes by stock module as it is not 1.5 compatible.

If this has any bearing on the issue, say if somebody from Spain or France orders an item, on the invoice sometimes the address is blank. I can only get the shipping address from the email we receive of the order notification. With regards to these countries, a lot of them use the funny letters within the addresses.

Bear in mind we never had this problem, or the one with the descriptions with 1.39 version. I am sure they are related, I think the system doesn't like certain html and letters from foreign addresses.

ALL of my product descriptions disappear when I open them in admin. I wanted to add weights to them, as I just switched to using USPS, but have discovered it will take HOURS because I will have to open the catalog page, copy the description, then paste it back into the admin editor before saving it. :(

The "define pages" editor is making those pages blank, too.

An incredible amount of work. If anyone has found a better way, please let me know.

See post #2 above.

I'm using the latest version of php. The problems seem to stem from special characters like the trademark symbols.

Removing them will NOT my suppliers happy, but I don't see any work around. :(

Do you have any logs in your /cache directory? I've seen a failure (and, unfortunately, hurried by it) where an invalid double-byte character was passed to the htmlentities() function.

I have found out what is causing this. It is definitely blanking the description out due to this character:-

�

When I use Quick Updates, I saw these symbols in various item descriptions when I used the edit function built into it. Any item without these symbols show a full description when you edit it via Categories / Products.

I checked the listings with the � symbol this way, and the descriptions show as blank.

I have done only a handful of edits through Quick Updates removing this (which cures the problem), but it is a shame there is no other way around it :-(

This is probably your problem: https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=414

Thankyou thankyou thankyou!!!

It worked a treat, you were spot on. I have learned something for sure now.

Please feel free to delete this thread, as it is not a bug it is just lack of knowledge on my part lol :smile: