Recovering a TFS label

Question

Hello,

We have a team that uses labels for around a hundred different changesets.  Recently a team member created a new label with the same name and it replaced their complex label.  Is there any way to recover the information previously associated with the label?  Is there something in the database or logs that we can search for from the past to rebuild the label?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi JU, 

Thanks for your post.

As far as I know there’s no default way to recover the replaced label. Once the old label be replaced, this old label’s ID will be removed from TFS database.

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Answer 2

Hello John,

Thank you for quick reply.

Other than Getting Labels details from Collection database backup, is there any work around for this?

As user by mistake "override" the existing label from visual studio when IDE popped with override message. 

Thanks and Regards,

Raghavendra Vagga

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Raghavendra Vagga

Answer 3

Hi Vagga, 

Thanks for your reply.

I also tried using TFS API and command, but they both cannot get the replaced label information.

I think you can try this work around: if you have your TFS or collection backup files which be created before that override label mistake happened, you can install a new temp TFS Server using your backup files, after the new temp TFS installed successfully, you can get that original label in this new temp TFS Server.

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Answer 4

And then if should be possible to use the TFS version control API to read out the label from one environment and piece it back together on the other. Make sure you restore the environment and update the Server ID and the Project Collection ID (clone) and prepare the collection for cloning before attempting to do cross communication between the old and the new (temporary) environment. Or the TFS API might get confused and mix up the connections when it sees that both servers have the same unique identifier.

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