Attribute selections missing from recovered orders

Are you using the variation-ID for recovering an item? If so I might have an idea on why this happens…

We are using selectable attributes which doesn’t have it’s own unique variations. Let’s take the above item as an example and let’s say the “Print”-terms doesn’t have unique variations, so it look like this in the product-edit-variations-tab:

#20452 [Small] [Black] [Any Print]
#20453 [Medium] [Black] [Any Print]
#20454 [Lagre] [Black] [Any Print]
…
…

So if your plugin is using the variation-ID to recover the order-item, it would not know the selected Print-term since it’s not given from the variation-ID.

Could this be the reason why all the attribute selections goes missing from the order-item?

We have created the variations through only default Woocommerce.

The issue is that you can not use the variation-ID to capture the information in a selectable attribute which have terms without unique variations.

Let me explain how you create these in the product, maybe this procedure is not well known unless you worked a lot with Woocommerce variations.

In the variable product, add two attributes e.g “Size” & “Color”.
Give them values e.g “Small, Medium” & “Black, White”.
Tick the boxes “Visible on the product page” & “Used for variations” and Save attributes.
Go to Variations tab & “Create variations from all attributes”.

Now you will have 4 variations looking like this:
#1 [Small][Black]
#2 [Medium][Black]
#3 [Small][White]
#4 [Medium][White]

Now let’s say you print a graphics on the t-shirt when the customer order, and you have 100 different graphics to choose from. To avoid having to create 100 different variation of each current variation which would sum to 400 variations, you create a selectable attribute with terms without unique variations.
(If we would create unique variations of each graphic we would end up with a huge DB when we have very many products like this.)

Now go to Attributes tab and add the attribute “Print” and give it some values.
Tick the boxes “Visible on the product page” & “Used for variations” and Save attributes.
Go to Variations tab but DO NOT create any new variations.

Now you will have 4 variations looking like this:
#1 [Small][Black][Any Print]
#2 [Medium][Black][Any Print]
#3 [Small][White][Any Print]
#4 [Medium][White][Any Print]

Save the product and check on front-end where you will have the 3 attribute drop-down selectors “Size”, “Color” & Print”.

I hope you now understand why I think it’s not possible to capture the selected “Print”-value from only using the variation-ID?