I had a pile of back-images to import recently. For some reason WordPress Import External Images” was failing to work properly on the bulk task. It worked great on individual pages but for some reason the Ajax version would crap out.

Solution was to use a simple POST – accomplished by doing this in Chrome DevTools (or similar JS console) when logged in:


jQuery.ajax('/blog/wp-admin/upload.php?page=external_image', {method: 'POST', data: {action: 'backcatalog'}};


The plugin needs to be fixed. I swear it used to work.