How to delete Invariant Language

Question

Using Sitecore 10.1 with commerce.

I see this Invariant language for some of the items. Here is a snap of a template's standard values (Regular custom Sitecore template) and all the items created from this template have it.

Performed the following steps with no luck:

1. Delete items with no language

DELETE FROM [VersionedFields] WHERE [Language] IN ('','hy-AM')  
DELETE FROM [UnversionedFields] WHERE [Language] IN ('','hy-AM')

2. Run the Sync Content Path command as this is a commerce instance.

3. Deleted all languages under system node except english.

4. Indexed master & web databases

Answer 1

You could do this with Unicorn (it will not fail, even with these rogue invariant item versions) but you can also achieve it with the built-in developer tools.

Before you do, set your default system serialization format to YAML. By default you can set this in App_Config\Sitecore\CMS.Core\Sitecore.Serialization.config.

Go to your Developer ribbon, Serialize the item in question.

Now go to your App_Data/serialization folder and find the file in question.

In the YAML file you will find something like this:

- Language: 
  Versions:
  - Version: 1
    Fields:
    - ID: "25bed78c-4957-4165-998a-ca1b52f67497"
      Hint: __Created
      Value: 20210630T100059Z
    - ID: "5dd74568-4d4b-44c1-b513-0af5f4cda34f"
      Hint: __Created by
      Value: |
        sitecore\Admin
- Language: en
  Versions:
  - Version: 1
    Fields:
    - ID: "25bed78c-4957-4165-998a-ca1b52f67497"
      Hint: __Created
      Value: 20210708T093402Z
    - ID: "5dd74568-4d4b-44c1-b513-0af5f4cda34f"
      Hint: __Created by
      Value: |
        sitecore\Anonymous

Notice the first one has no language specification, it reads Language: .

Delete this rogue version and save the file.

Now go back to your ribbon, and select "Revert Item".

This should clear it up for you.

Also note that you are likely to run into this problem again, as this is a known bug in SXA. You can find some details in this blog post: Sitecore SXA/JSS – Invariant language versions and access denied exceptions

Update, the SQL way

I also strongly believe you did not try out the comment from Hishaam above. When you have "Invariant Language" showing up in your Content Editor, there most definitely will be entries in your VersionedFields table that shows it. You could get rid of them by executing a SQL statement on both your Master and Web databases.

• DELETE FROM [Sitecore.Master].[dbo].[VersionedFields] WHERE [Language] = ''
• DELETE FROM [Sitecore.Web].[dbo].[VersionedFields] WHERE [Language] = ''

Don't forget to completely reset IIS after making changes on SQL level.