restore full community deleted in dspace

[Rikchard]

  A user deleted an entire community, along with its subcommunities, collections, and items, and I need to restore it. I attempted to export and import the structure from a recovered environment, followed by re-importing the items, but the structure import command returns an error stating that the handle already exists. What would be the correct procedure to perform the recovery as cleanly as possible, without manually modifying the database or restoring the database to a previous state? Thank you very much.  

[Carolyn Sullivan]

Hello,

First of all, I'm very sorry to hear this happened to you.  This happened to us last year.

Which version of DSpace are you running?  In DSpace 7.x (not sure about older versions), there is a process to restore materials from AIPs.  Here's the documentation: https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC7x/AIP+Backup+and+Restore#AIPBackupandRestore-HowdoesthisdifferfromtraditionalDSpaceBackups?WhichBackuprouteisbetter

You can also read about my adventures dealing with this in the DSpace Technical Support thread here: https://groups.google.com/g/dspace-tech/c/uspAAoD9hK4/m/OW-CwNKaBgAJ

Hope this helps.  Good luck.  

Carolyn.