How to fix Umbraco error: could not find an editor with alias xxx
Article showing how to fix Umbraco error: Could not find an editor with alias {EditorAlias}, treating as Label. The site may fail to boot and/or load data types and run.
If you see this error repeatedly in the Umbraco log then you probably have a data type in use that has been deleted. This can happen when you upgrade a site and the editor is no longer available and when you use a package as a property editor. If the issue is due to a missing package then the first and simplest fix is to install the package however sometimes a package may no longer be compatible and so this article will walk you through fixing it.
Step 1:
Open a connection to the database and execute the following SQL (where xxx is the alias of the problem editor, this should be included in the log entry) to identify which editor is causing the problem:
"SELECT * FROM umbracoDataType WHERE propertyEditorAlias = 'xxx';"
Step 2:
Copy the 'nodeId' from the returned result set and open your Umbraco instance with the following URL (where EDITOR_ID is the ID of the row you just copied:
"~/umbraco/#/settings/dataTypes/edit/EDITOR_ID"
Step 3:
Change the Property Editor type to a known editor or update to a custom editor by clicking the 'Change' option within the data type editor screen. The simplest fix is to set this to a text string until you have time to apply a more stable fix.
Step 4:
Done! You should no longer see the error in the Umbraco log. You may need to repeat this process for all missing editor types.
To find which content items or document types are using the troublesome data type I would recommend using the Diplo.GodMode package for Umbraco. This will let you see which document types or content pages you will be impacting before making your change.