How can I prevent Confluence from discarding content when I save?
Asked by Mstar:

I have a few Confluence issues that result in missing content and I wonder if they are related.

If I edit a Confluence page, it is not uncommon to save the page and find a portion of what I have written to be discarded. This happens with brand new pages, and with edits on existing pages. In the case of new content, it is not possible to recover text from the version history--it just never made it on to the server.

Adding images, or especially using automatic bullet formatting **greatly** increases the chances of their being problems.

While typing bulleted lists, I occasionally see bizarre behavior in the editor. For example, when I type a space in a bulleted line, the cursor can jump backwards and eat the last word or line that I wrote.

When I observe flaky bullet behavior, if I save the Confluence page, typically the entire bulleted list will be missing, and possibly everything after that point too. The problem with bullets is so common that I now only add bullets after all text is entered. Formatting as I go is very risky.

I always see the reassuring notice in the editor that my work has been saved, but it just isn't true sometimes.

++This is not an OS-level problem, or popcorn stuck in my keyboard, because it *only* happens when typing in a Confluence bulleted list, and it happens on multiple kinds of computers and any wifi network.++

My perception is that this problem has gotten worse over the last few months. It is so common now that I have to copy and paste all my Confluence pages into a text editor before committing a save, so that I can re-edit, paste and reformat any missing text.

I've used Atlassian-hosted Confluence for years at multiple offices and it is only since about May of this year that I have had these problems.

I've long since turned off all my ad blockers and other privacy tools. Confluence should be running unhindered, but it is still flaky. Is there anything I can do to make Confluence more reliable? It has turned from one of my favorite tools into a real chore to use.


Answers:
author: Bill Bailey
body: This behavior sounds really odd? Have you tried different browsers? Does this occur if you are pasting text that is not plain text?

comments: author: Mstar
body: I haven't tried different browsers because it is inconvenient, but it's one of the only next steps I can think of.

My reference to pasting text was when I'm trying to fix what went missing. This is my workflow:

1. Type new document or edits in Confluence; don't save it yet
2. Select all content in the Confluence editor, copy, paste into *some other editor*... just in case
3. Save in Confluence
4. If material goes missing on the published page, edit it, and copy/paste as needed from the backup editor and try again

Using images or especially bulleted lists greatly increases the chances of missing content when I save. As I mentioned, typing a bulleted list can even make the *editor* misbehave badly, to the point where I can't continue typing.

It is hard for me to develop a repro case for these problems. They are common, but not easily repeatable. And I cannot save a page with problems to show Atlassian, because when I save a page with problems, the parts with problems disappear.

If a developer was listening I would try to develop a repro to share.


author: Bill Bailey
body: Is this only in cloud?Which browser (and version) and OS are you on?

And to debug, I would suggest using another browser to try to track down the issue. I have seen differences between FireFox and Chrome in the past (albeit, not this severe).


author: Mstar
body: This is only on the cloud service. The OS is Win 10 (2 different machines) and the browser is Chrome, which is always the latest version unless the upgrade is waiting for a restart.

Next time I have to do a big document, I will try Edge and see how it goes.

Here's a related weird observation from a couple of days ago... I had created a new document, about a page of mixed text and screen shot images that I pasted in. Nothing fancy: Header 1 and Paragraph styles, plus pasted images.

Before I saved, I did a select-all and Copy. Then I pasted it all into a separate, new, blank Confluence editor. *A lot of what I copied did not appear when I pasted.*I was missing chunks of text and some pasted images.

I was surprised and tried it a couple more times--it was repeatable.

When I pasted into a simple desktop text editor, all the text was there. (No pictures or formatting, of course.)

Then I saved the original page, and the saved version was missing the same material that was missing when I tried to paste it all into another Confluence editor.

In other words, you can get the editor into a state where it lets you work on content that is somehow silently corrupted, and can't be saved to the server, or even copied into the clipboard with full formatting.

(Through all of these episodes, when I paste in an image, the image does successfully make it into the Attachments. If not for that it would be nigh unusable.)


author: Bill Bailey
body: I think you should file a support case. Maybe they can see something in the logs that would explain what is going on.

Are their other users seeing the same thing on your instance?


author: Mstar
body: Nope! But we are a very small shop and I am the primary document creator. Everyone else's use of the editor is very minor.

Thanks for the encouragement. I will try to collect enough data from the next incident to merit using support.


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud

editor