Please help me fix this mess (database help)

[dekatria]

Hi,

A member modified all his post into a "."  and also did that to all the replies to a recent thread where he was the initial poster (I had mistakenly given this permission to a poster starter)

This has happened 5 days ago.
I probably have a backup, but since then new posts have been posted to the forum.

What is the best way to bring back all his posts and the topic, yet not lose the posts that have been made the last 5 days?

I would think that one should take a database backup from say 5 days ago and add the new posts from a backup from today. But I don't know if it is possible or how to do it.

In any case is it possible to just revive a member's older posts (from an older database)?
Or is it possible to add a new topic to an old backup?

[vbgamer45]

In the database backup. do a search on the smf_messages table  for the member id of the poster.
You might be able to do this in phpmyadmin then export.
Then change the insert into statements into REPLACE INTO to update the messages

[dekatria]

This seems like a good idea.

The problem is that right now myphpadmin is showing the current state of the database.
I don't know how can I copy paste the users messages from an old database. I don't even know how I can open it (in my PC?)

Another Idea would be to automatically restore to an old backup and (how?) copy paste the whole board of the current backup.

[vbgamer45]

You would have to copy and paste the messages from the old database to the new one that is an option. ideally you would import the old database into a new database then just insert/update replace the content of messages table to the current database.

[Kindred]

Quite honestly, there is no good, easy way to do this. It'll be a long, manual slog

[dekatria]

I guess you are correct.
I saved the new topic as htm files.
I reverted to an old backup and reposted the new thread as .htm files in a new post.
Not the pro way to do it, but only took me 10 minutes.