So the other day, while I was sleeping my site inexplicably lost all of its settings. I have a feeling that another admin accidentally updated the theme, but that is neither here nor there. I have a backup of the database, but it is a multi-user site and items have been added to the database since the mix up. My question is, is there a way that I can restore just the settings from the backup or do I have to restore the entire database. Sorry if this is a redundant question, I searched the forum but couldn't find this answer. Thanks in advance for any help.

This might seem like a lot of work, but may be the safest thing.

create a new database and restore the backup to that. Then create a new wordpress in install in a subfolder or test site. use phpmyadmin to edit the 'siteurl' and 'home' rows of the wp-option table to point to the new location

Then you can login and just use the Atahualpa export to get all teh settings.

Thanks for the reply. What if I don't have a recent theme settings export (I know, punching myself)? Are the settings before the reset saved in my database backup?

they should be. The atahualpa settings are stored in the wordpress database - in the wp-options table in the row 'bfa_ata4'

perfect, thanks for your help.

So I restored the data from a backup of just that row, but the theme did not change back to the way it was. When I go back to the theme options page in the backend, none of my CSS inserts are there. Am I missing a step or am I just screwed?

How did you restore that one row? Export/import it using phpMyAdmin?