When adding a value to your UID field, you may encounter an error when trying to save your page.
This could mean another page in your repository already has this UID value. It could be a page that is drafted or in the archive. If you can't find the page with this UID value, one of your pages used to have this UID value, and kept it stored in its history. To re-assign a UID, you must delete the document that currently has that UID.
This article will explain why an old UID becomes locked and how to unlock it.
Old UID Values
A UID field will save all previous UID values.
We save all the previous UID values of a given document so that your old links won't be broken on your site when you change a UID value.
Because the UID value must be unique, the document can not reuse an old UID value on a different one. You will receive the above error if you try to use an old UID name on a different document.
Preventing an old URL from appearing on your site
To prevent a page from appearing with the old URL, we suggest that you check with each URL to see if the UID received is the current one. If so, load the page; if not, redirect to the current URL.
Finding, removing, & unlocking an old UID value from a document
What if I need to use a UID that has previously been used?
Let’s say you have an old UID value called old-uid
that you wish to reuse on another document. To reassign it, duplicate the document associated with old-uid
and delete the document’s original version.
If you don’t know which document is storing old-uid
, navigate to your API Explorer (replace your-repo-name
with your repository’s name):
https://your-repo-name.prismic.io/builder/explorer
Change the request method to getByUID
, select your document type, and enter the UID you’re looking for. The document associated with old-uid
will be returned.
Note that if your repo uses more than one language, you might need to select different lang parameters.
Once you've found the page, you need to duplicate it. You can do this by going to that page, click on the three dots next to the Publish button, and click on Duplicate.
After you've duplicated it, you can delete the original, and this will allow you to use old-uid
again.