What would cause the Macro browser to be unable to load?
Asked by Robert Matthews:

We have just installed Confluence 3.5.13 on a sandbox machine for evaluation. When attempting to add a macro to an existing page, an error window displays stating: There has been an error loading the macro browser. Please try again or see your system administrator.


Answers:
author: RIsk
body: I've had this issue come up a couple of times. Restarting the Confluence Service on the server cleared it up both times.

comments: author: Kirk Fahlberg
body: Thanks!

Restarting the Confluence Service Resolved the error - "*There has been an error loading the macro browser. Please try again or see your system administrator."*


author: Matt
body: Perhaps you are having the same issue as this -- [Why won't the Macro Browser load, after we upgraded from 3.5.5 to 4.1?](../25964/why-won-t-the-macro-browser-load-after-we-upgraded-from-3-5-5-to-4-1)

\>\>The only time I've seen this problem is when there was a third party or custom plugin installed that wasn't 4.x compatible. Have you got any third party plugins installed that may not be 4.x compatible? If so, you could try disabling them via the admin console and re-enabling them one by one. Also, is there anything in the logs that could give a clue as to why the browser is not loading?


author: Michael S
body: Just resurrecting an old thread, another possible cause is when you have global/space layout changes leftover from before the upgrade. Any time you make changes it saves a snapshot of the layout, so after an upgrade Confluence can be referring to old/deprecated code.

Removing the layouts temporarily is a good way to test.


author: Robert Matthews
body: After reviewing the current installed instance of Confluence it was found that more than 40% of used plugins are Outdated. Using the UPM to automatically update all plugins was unsuccessful. Between these facts and the other recommendations, all added plugins were removed, then reinstalled one by one.   

This seems to have resolved the initial problem with the macro browser. Thanks to all for the "second set of eyes" on this problem.


author: Jo-Anne MacLeod
body: my first thought is, have you considered loading the newest version of confluence 4.1? Then what browser are you using? What os are you running on?

comments: author: Jo-Anne MacLeod
body: fair enough. So are you seeing the same behavior in both IE and Firefox? And are you currently running the default Confluence, or have you already loaded your database into it?


author: Robert Matthews
body: It is required the existing data from our current 3.0.2 installation migrate forward. Upgrade instructions indicate installing 3.5.x before going to 4.x is required.

An additional symptom is that neither the Rich Text editor nor the Preview work while attempting to edit a page.

SYSTEM INFORMATION  
Confluence Version 3.5.13  
Build Number 2171  
_____________________________  
Java Runtime Environment  
Operating System Linux 2.6.18-194.11.4.el5  
OS Architecture amd64  
Application Server Apache Tomcat/6.0.32  
Servlet Version 2.5  
Java Version 1.6.0_27  
Java Vendor Sun Microsystems Inc.  
JVM Version 1.0  
JVM Vendor Sun Microsystems Inc.  
JVM Implementation Version 20.2-b06  
Java Runtime Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment  
Java VM Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM  
____________________________  
Database Information  
Database name MySQL  
Database version 5.0.91  
Database Dialect com.atlassian.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect  
Database Driver Name com.mysql.jdbc.Driver  
Database Driver Version mysql-connector-java-5.1.11 ( Revision: ${svn.Revision} )  
Database Connection URL jdbc:mysql://localhost/confluence?autoReconnect=true  
Database Connection Transaction Isolation Read committed  
Database Latency 0  

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author: Dimitrios Zlitidis
body: We have the same problem. Any help?