Clipboard copying a document content to a template is not working
Asked by Stephen C:

I've put a significant effort into creating a document in my personal work space and need to get it into a template. I have successfully copied the document from my personal space to the teams space using the integrated "Copy" function, but, I don't have the same ability to copy to a template for my team.

I'm trying to now take this document and put it into our spaces templates (for tighter control and revisions) but I'm having a problem taking a clipboard copy of my initial document into the template.

What's happened so far is I've gone into the content tools for the teams area, created a new template, entered a new header, then pasted the previous work, saved the changed, but, nothing showed up in the user created templates list. I went to search for the document, but nothing shows up in even the recently modified documents.

So the second stab at this, I tried just creating a template, gave it a basic header, saved it, and it showed up in the user created templates list. I go to edit the document, again paste in my previous document, then save. I re-edit, and my pasted text does not show up.

Third times the charm, right? Not in this case. I add some simple text, just "asdf" kind of text, save, then re-edit, and the "asdf' shows up. I select all, paste, save, re-edit, and "asdf" shows up.

I'm not getting any kind of error at this point.

I thought about taking the document and copying it into the templates, but, when I select my teams space, I don't have the ability to select the Templates section.

I am administrator of the group, I have already created one other template (Which I STARTED in the template section).

Why are my pastes from one Confluence document not going into a template? What work arounds are there for this?


Answers:
author: Darryl St_ Pierre
body: Stephen, does the document you're copying from have sections? If so, you will need to recreate the sections on the receiving template before trying to copy content. Additionally, you'll need to copy/paste each section separately.

Otherwise, have you tried just copying a small portion of the original template to the new one?

comments: author: Stephen C
body: There's only the one main section that I can see.

Copying smaller parts of the original document seems to work as expected, so my guess is that there's something very specific that's aborting the ENTIRE transaction. Maybe images? Maybe just the volume? Can't see that as I can make small changes and things work in the original doc.

The part that's got me on a bit of the confused side is that i can preview the changes, and things show up. MAYBE I'm hitting some kind of limit (This is a rather long document) for the SQL insertion or something like that, and I'm getting a silent error. I do not have access to the actual back end.


author: Darryl St_ Pierre
body: Not sure about any limits, but I've run into the copy issue before. It may also be related to a macro/macros(?)


author: Stephen C
body: The fanciest thing this document has is the check-boxes that I'm using is the TOC, link to Jira, and the check boxes (Which I use EVERYWHERE to confirm work done for that step).

I'll look into this more tomorrow when I have some time tomorrow.

At least the chunking of copy/paste works. If I find what's breaking the paste \& save, I'll make a note here about it. If it's something simple, I can always add it in manually, and go on with the rest of my life not understanding how my manually entering is better than a copy/paste. \*shrugs\*


author: Stephen C
body: For now, the quick answer I've been able to find is just copy/paste chunks of the original to the template. I haven't found exactly what's breaking the system yet.


author: Stephen C
body: It seems like the problem is with copying images that were pasted into the document.

I copied a couple of paragraphs with one image from my original document, pasted it into the template, saved it, the entire submission didn't get submitted. I re-pasted the paragraphs, removed the image, saved, and the text went in.

So now I need to figure out how to get images into the template. It may be just a browser type of "Copy Image" from the source, then "Paste Image" to the template?

Would this be considered a bug, or is there a reason images can't be copied from one Confluence document to another?


author: Stephen C
body: And to this I add, "only sometimes". I haven't found a pattern quite yet, to why it works only sometimes.

I did the browser only "copy image" from source page, then pasted image into the template, and it took. I then copied a chunk of text with an image from the source, and pasted it to the template, and it took.

This is going to be a slow-and-steady project, it seems....


author: Darryl St_ Pierre
body: Frustrating indeed. Trying to search through Known Issues, but I need to brush up on my search syntax. If I find anything or open a bug report, I'll drop it here.


author: Darryl St_ Pierre
body: Found this, though my own experience has not included images, only full page copies. It's also 3 1/2 years old with no activity...

[https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-39646?jql=project%20%3D%20%22Confluence%20Cloud%22%20AND%20type%20%3D%20Bug%20AND%20Summary%20\~%22copy%22%20AND%20summary%20\~%22template%22%20AND%20statusCategory%20!%3D%20Done%20ORDER%20BY%20Updated](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-39646?jql=project%20%3D%20%22Confluence%20Cloud%22%20AND%20type%20%3D%20Bug%20AND%20Summary%20~%22copy%22%20AND%20summary%20~%22template%22%20AND%20statusCategory%20!%3D%20Done%20ORDER%20BY%20Updated)


author: Stephen C
body: Thanks. I've added my notes to [to that ticket](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-39646?jql=project%20%3D%20%22Confluence%20Cloud%22%20AND%20type%20%3D%20Bug%20AND%20Summary%20~%22copy%22%20AND%20summary%20~%22template%22%20AND%20statusCategory%20!%3D%20Done%20ORDER%20BY%20Updated) and have unmarked this as "Solved".


Tags: confluence-server

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