Latest Version of Image displaye in a Previous Version of a Confluence Page
Asked by Karen_Mustain:

Hi All,

My name is Karen Mustain. I'm a Solution Designer for Confluence at Cerner. We use Confluence for our controlled documentation for our solutions. Recently, it was brought to our attention in an audit that when looking at a previous version of a Confluence page with an attached image the latest version of the image is displayed.

<br />

When looking at the Confluence page history and selecting one of the previous page versions, if the page has an attached image, the current behavior of Confluence is to show the latest version of the attached image.

It should show the version of the image which was available at the point of time of the page version.

The auditors had a concern that the latest version of the image was referenced instead of the version applicable to the page version.

There is an existing suggestion to change the current behavior: <https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-37156>

However, there are no plans to work on this suggestion.

I was wondering if anyone else using Confluence for their controlled documentation and has a concern with this behavior. If you do, I would encourage to comment and vote on the suggestion. As well, share if you have made any customizations to Confluence to change this behavior.

Thanks Karen


Answers:
author: reiner.rudolph
body: Hi,

this feature could be much more helpful if:

1. Most important: I could see and select an image version on the attachment pages.
2. Nice to have: in addition to the "Delete" there could be a direct download on attachment page
3. Images would change correctly with the history (this would be my expectation)
4. In the Preview (as described above) the correct image to for the version is shown. I sometimes a get the correct image in v3 when selecting "Version 3" in drop down, but sometimes I see image of version 2 or 4. It is flaky, but clearly a bug here. (There is no need to use the Preview-workaround if the attachment space worked well. So probably, while it is a bug, it is not that important)

The feature would be really good, if at least point one would work as expected.


author: a.stucki@solcept.ch
body: Hi

We would not need the versioning on the page, but at least the image in the backend should be on the right version when one clicks on it in the version history. What else is the history for otherwise?

Thanks a lot for resolving this bug

Andy


author: Cris Luengo
body: This should have been fixed, so many years after it was first reported. This is seriously problematic!

The problem actually is worse than described here: if you have an image A.png on a page, and want to post a new image with the same file name next to it, so upload a \*different\* A.png, the first image will be replaced by the second, and the page will have two copies of the new image, instead of two different images.

I'm hoping that this happens only within one page, that I haven't inadvertently been replacing images on other pages too...


author: Fabrizio Da Ros
body: Thanks [a.stucki@solcept.ch](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2518916) to brought up limitations. In particular the second is severe.

These points are 2 more reasons why we need "git commit" like behaviour when versioning page as described by [@Karen_Mustain](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/720993)

Bye

Fabrizio


author: Karen_Mustain
body: [@Fabrizio Da Ros](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/762009)

Thanks for the information. I appreciate the suggested workaround. I'm not sure if we can take advantage of it for the same issues that [a.stucki@solcept.ch](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2518916) pointed out.

If we can continue to encourage votes on the open Jira issue: <https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-37156>

Also, if any of you are TAM customers I encourage you to bring it up them. That is approach the approach I have been taking.

Thanks Karen


author: a.stucki@solcept.ch
body: IMHO the "solution" has 2 issues:

- the effort and possibility of bugs to do manual version

- the problem that "URL-links" are broken when the base changes (Space copies...)


author: a.stucki@solcept.ch
body: My five cent on "traction vote-wise": everybody (and I mean ?everybody!) would expect this to work in the way Karen describes (image/ attachment version is coupled to page version), everything else is a bug. BUT in most cases (small changes) nobody will note it...


author: Fabrizio Da Ros
body: Karen I fully agree with you. Same problem for me. Actually I was surprised when I discovered old page version doesn't remember image version! I was expecting a git commit behaviour.

I won't call it "feature" but bug fix.

Anyhow, I found a workaround that is not really straight forward but manageable.

Instead of inserting the image itself, first upload the image as attachment, open the image history, choose the version you want and copy its URL with right-clicking.

Now, edit the page, and when you ctrl+M, choose "Images from the web" and paste the URL.

Now it works as you (and me) expect.

If you delete an image version from the history (1,2,3 and you delete 2), all is still working fine since image versions don't get shifted to close holes like what happens with page history (another crazy thing). Hence if you delete image version 2, you will have version 1 and 3. Of course if version 2 is mentioned in the page, it won't be displayed!

Hope this can mitigate the problem

Bye


author: a.stucki@solcept.ch
body: And hey, I just tried the workaround of Melody: do not make me laugh... if this is the way to do it...


author: Melody Strauss
body: Karen,

I want to thank you for noting this. I was glad to find this a problem as it was brought to my attention by one of our Capture Managers as we work toward a proposal for an upcoming contract renewal. He was unable to see the older images even when pulling the images up separately from the file list versions much less the page history.

I developed a complete Confluence How-to on how to view these images through the Image Preview option, but managers aren't happy.

Open the Preview - top left corner of the window: select a version from the drop down arrow - top right window: select download from the download option and download the image file to a viewer or save it. This is the process whether you are in the list of attachments attempting to view the historical image versions or in the file list.

I added a post to Adil's feedback page as well and noted the Confluence issue to my management.

Melody


author: Phili Couwenbergh
body: Just discovered this behaviour also, Karen, and I was surprised as well.... I will look at the link suggested by Carolyn. Just to let you know, you have my full support in this.

Thanks, Phili


author: Karen_Mustain
body: Thanks Carolyn. I will do that.

Karen


author: carolyn french
body: I can certainly understand why you would need this, and am surprised that the issue has such little traction votes-wise.

One of the Atlassian researchers is soliciting feedback on storing content, might be a good person to bring this to the attention of:

<https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-discussions/Would-love-some-feedback-on-using-content-collaboration-tools/m-p/707377#M1177>


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