How to make attachment links local to a page
Asked by Andrew Pardoe:

I want to make all images and file links on a page local to that page as an attachment so that if the linked pages are deleted I don't loose any information. Is there an easy way to do this?


Answers:
author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: I'm afraid the requirement is not clear - if you're deleting a page, then it's gone. You are **always** going to lose information because anything that links to the page you have deleted is now linking so something that does not exist. Equally, the images and links on that page are going to be deleted too because there's nothing there.

I think what I'm saying is that I don't understand what you expect to happen with this "make stuff as an attachment" - that sounds like some form of backup? In which case, you could simply export the page to another format and store it somewhere else. But I'm really not sure I grasp what you're looking for - could you explain further?

comments: author: Andrew Pardoe
body: Sorry for not being clear.

I have a page that has images and files I've inserted and appear in the page, but the are just link to other pages on our Confluence intranet.

If (someone else for eg) decides to delete those pages then my links break, and I no longer have that image or file on my page.

I was hoping that if I create a page with all of these links, that there is a single function that will collect all the data (images and files) the are required in my page. and attach them directly to that page as copies.

That way if the pages I'm linking to are deleted it does not effect my page- does that make it clearer?

Thanks,

ANDY


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: There's no need to apologise - my use of language can be very confusing as well. It's also often me over-thinking it, or running through situations that I've seen or imagined before and getting confused (problem there is that I cannot tell when I'm doing that!). Or just that I simply don't grasp it.I think you've clarified it perfectly - you have pages with links to other pages (and/or their attachments). If someone deletes the target of one of your links, your page then shows a broken link.I'm afraid there's nothing you can really do about that inside Confluence - the whole point of a link to another page is that the target page (and/or file) is actually there. The only real answer here is for you to stop using links and instead, copy everything from the target page into your page. Which is very clumsy, and defeats the purpose of using links.It still seems like you need some form of "backup the targets from my page" - that's a complex thing to do and certainly not a native function. Even if you implemented it as a basic backup, you're still going to have broken links on your page.I still have a strong feeling that what you really want is "do not delete pages"


author: Andrew Pardoe
body: Yep,OK far point. I just like tidying things up. If there is no auto function, then if I want to delete a page, I'll just rigorously check incoming links, and make sure I save any images / attachments I need.I'm always looking for quick / easy methods.... sometimes I find 'em, sometimes I don't.Thanks for the help and don't worry about the over thinking, I do it myself a lot.ANDY