Problem stopping execution Cannot read properties of null (reading ‘data’)

[alexdev-afk]

I was triggering executions watching a folder, but the workflow ended up creating hidden files as part of the workflow in the same folder and so an infinite loop occured. N8N started getting slower and slower and when i finally became unresponsive I restarted it and noticed about 25k executions were attempted. After disabling the workflow and clearing out most of the logs, im left with 10 Executions in the list which are still “Starting Soon”:

I cant remove it because it produces this error:

Problem stopping execution
Cannot read properties of null (reading ‘data’)

I find 2 other threads with the same error:
ERROR: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'data') (this one was unresolved)
Problem stopping execution Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'cancel') (this one was resolved by updating n8n but these were very early versions and we are long past that now)

I am wondering if theres any way to solve this save for trying to manually edit the database file?

#[details=“instance information”]

Debug info

core

• n8nVersion: 1.100.1
• platform: docker (self-hosted)
• nodeJsVersion: 22.16.0
• database: sqlite
• executionMode: regular
• concurrency: -1
• license: community

storage

• success: all
• error: all
• progress: false
• manual: true
• binaryMode: memory

pruning

• enabled: true
• maxAge: 336 hours
• maxCount: 10000 executions

client

• userAgent: mozilla/5.0 (windows nt 10.0; win64; x64) applewebkit/537.36 (khtml, like gecko) chrome/138.0.0.0 safari/537.36
• isTouchDevice: false

Generated at: 2025-07-08T10:16:04.428Z}
[/details]

[alexdev-afk]

When restarting n8n I noticed this error in the logs, it does seem related to my issue. Do you think this qualifies as a bug report?

Found executions without executionData
Error: Found executions without executionData
at ExecutionRepository.reportInvalidExecutions (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/node_modules/.pnpm/@n8n+db@file+packages+@n8n+db_@[email protected][email protected][email protected]_@aws-sdk_01aaf5c79cfea48cc4aafead892992d1/node_modules/@n8n/db/src/repositories/execution.repository.ts:221:4)
at ExecutionRepository.findMultipleExecutions (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/node_modules/.pnpm/@n8n+db@file+packages+@n8n+db_@[email protected][email protected][email protected]_@aws-sdk_01aaf5c79cfea48cc4aafead892992d1/node_modules/@n8n/db/src/repositories/execution.repository.ts:187:9)
at ExecutionService.findAllEnqueuedExecutions (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/src/executions/execution.service.ts:413:10)
at Start.runEnqueuedExecutions (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/src/commands/start.ts:379:22)
at Start.run (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/src/commands/start.ts:326:4)
at Start._run (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/node_modules/.pnpm/@[email protected]/node_modules/@oclif/core/lib/command.js:302:22)
at Config.runCommand (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/node_modules/.pnpm/@[email protected]/node_modules/@oclif/core/lib/config/config.js:424:25)
at run (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/node_modules/.pnpm/@[email protected]/node_modules/@oclif/core/lib/main.js:94:16)
at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/bin/n8n:71:2

[John_Portella]

I have the same problem. did you manage to solve it??

[alexdev-afk]

They made a fix in release 1.107.0. The stable tag has not shifted to this yet so I’m waiting for that before updating.

[John_Portella]

I have stable version 1.106.3. I haven’t been able to figure out what caused the three executions to queue. But what I did to stop them from appearing was update it directly from the database.

UPDATE execution_entity
SET status=‘failed’
WHERE status IN (‘waiting’, ‘running’);

[alexdev-afk]

After the latest update, these executions can now be removed from the UI.