Visual Composer codes showing instead of elements

Hi there,

I hope you can provide me with some assistance, I have been asked to help make some changes to a site as well as make the back-end a bit more user friendly. The reason this is posing a problem is the following:

The original developer built the site using the Storefront theme along with the pre-packaged Visual Composer plugin, it seems there was also a second developer that installed elementor and built certain elements with elementor (or attempted to edit existing elements that were built with Visual Composer). The reason, I’m assuming, instead of visual composer “visual” elements showing up in the back end only short codes are appearing. Please see screenshot 1 and 2. The first screenshot (https://imgur.com/pTzZn71) is what you get if you click “edit page”, and the second screenshot (https://imgur.com/VyXWHpj) is what you see if you click “Classic Mode”.

I have tried deleting VC and re-installing VC from Storefront, in an attempt to get the latest version of VC, to see if this would resolve the issue, however it seems, that the theme is also outdated. I have tried checking for an update, however I am waiting to get feedback regarding the Envato account that was used to purchase the theme.

Do you perhaps know if updating the theme and subsequently getting an updated version of VC will resolve the short code issue? I do not know if the theme license may have to be purchased again if the original developer cannot be tracked down, this is why I need to know if this could resolve the issue, as I don’t want to give the wrong advise, if there might be a better solution.

Thanks in advance.

Rachel