Hello Helen, thanks for the reply.
We are pretty sure it is human error. Our hosting service alerted us that our server was nearing capacity, and recommended that we back-up courses and store .mbz files to a Google drive. We did intend to back up user data and course badges on the restore, and in most cases were successful.
We then deleted the classes from our Moodle drive. This was poor advice on many levels, mostly because we realized we lost course history from the students' profiles. We restored the .mbz files to Moodle, but the Badge information did not restore with all of them -- likely because the box was not checked in those cases.
Interestingly, the badges restored to the individuals' profiles - image and name of the course -- they even link back to a badge.php?hash= page, which names the badge, but is otherwise blank
About 100 individuals in 3 courses are in this situation - badge image is noted on their profile, but no criteria or award history. We have that information; we don't know if it is possible to restore or recreate it for these individuals without giving them a 2nd badge.
I should say this is V. 2.9.6, so we are unable to delete the badge.
Robin