hi all
Made changes inside the workflow; Want to update them
But publishing does not work
Please advice
Could you share your n8n version and whether this is Cloud or self-hosted? Also, does the error appear before the publish dialog opens, or only after you confirm the version name?
The message alone doesn’t tell us which entry is conflicting. If you enter a name for the published version, try a new, distinct version label first. If that changes nothing, the next useful detail is the failed publish request’s response in your browser’s Network tab. Please remove cookies, tokens and any private URLs before sharing it.
I’d export a backup of the workflow before changing trigger paths or deleting anything. Those changes could affect callers of the current published workflow.
That error names a saved version entry, not your workflow title, so renaming the workflow itself will not clear it. Publishing always writes a version for the workflow (its name defaults to a UUID), so the cheapest test is to give the version an obviously unique name in the Publish dialog and publish again.
If it still fails with a unique version name, there is nothing to fix in the canvas: “there is already an entry with this name” reported since the versioning rollout is an internal duplicate / primary-key clash, not a workflow or version name you can see. Report it to n8n with your version, the workflow ID and the exact message. In the meantime, duplicating the workflow and publishing the copy gives the version history fresh rows and is usually enough to get you moving again.
One behaviour worth knowing while you debug this: publishing is asynchronous, so a failure can appear a little after the dialog closes. Check the publish status on the workflow rather than assuming the click did nothing.
thanks all
I have found a root cause:
it was caused by running n8n 2.34.5 against a database schema that had already been migrated forward by 2.39.8. Fixed by upgrading the deployed image back to 2.39.8 to match the schema.