Another menu item has the same alias in Root in Joomla

Posted in Tutorials

Tweet This Share on Facebook Bookmark on Delicious Digg this Submit to Reddit

If you are trying to create a menu in Joomla 3.2 and get this error saying …

“Save failed with the following error: Another menu item has the same alias in Root. Root is the top level parent”

another menu has same alias

another menu has same alias

It is likely because you are trying to create a menu that has the same alias as an existing item.  An alias is the string auto-generated based on the title of the menu …

menu alias

menu alias

So one solution is to type in another alias in the field that is unique.

But you want the particular menu alias that you are creating and you don’t have another menu with that alias.   Then it is likely that you “used” to have that menu alias before but was trashed.   You have to check your trash and empty the trash in order to release and re-use that alias.

Emptying the Menu Trash to Release Menu Alias

To check in the trash …

1. go to “Menu -> Menu Manager”

2. Select left menu “Menu Item”

Emptying Menu Trash

Emptying Menu Trash

3.  For each of your Menu in the drop list, change the “select status” droplist to “Trashed”.   This shows you a list of trashed items.

4. Checkmark the items and click “Empty Trash” button.

5.  You should get confirmation message “Menu Items successfully deleted”

6.  There is also a “Rebuild” button.  There is no harm in clicking that and sometimes it may help to do so if things still doesn’t work.