Edit Documents in place
Asked by Jeff Kell:

In Confluence 5.8.6 our users could edit documents in place rather than always download, update, upload again. They tell me that more involved process is painful.

<br />

We upgraded to 6.13.0 last week and this functionality is missing.  

Our instance is hosted behind a firewall and doesn't connect to the internet for Marketplace etc so all installs of plugins etc are manual.  

In order to get this working for our users, do they need special software on each of their client/laptops?   

I see mention of: [Atlassian Companion app](https://confluence.atlassian.com/conf613/edit-files-964960723.html#EditFiles-AtlassianCompanionapp)

Do you know if there was a free plugin that allowed this to work on 5.8.6? Or was it a built-in feature?


Answers:
author: seank33f3
body: What if we don't want to have to force our users to have to install another piece of software on their machines? As others have stated, getting software approved to be installed on the general population's desktops isn't a quick process. At my company, it can be even longer due to miles and miles of red tape. Can the original functionality be restored somehow? This seems like a backwards move to me. We just upgraded to 6.15.6 and there is absolutely no way to edit from Confluence now despite the documentation stating that you can still edit from the attachments menu. So should I just tell my users they'll have to download, edit then re-upload manually in the meantime? And if we're not able to get this extra piece of software approved, then I guess they're all stuck doing it the painful way?


author: josh
body: Hi Jeff,

The Atlassian Companion app should still work regardless if your Confluence can connect to the internet.

What is necessary is that the user install the Companion App on their local pc, not on the server. The word "app" can be confusing in the atlassian ecosystem as it can mean both a desktop application or an add-on to a server product.

Have you tried installing the Companion? The way to use it is to go into the preview of the attached file, then you should see "edit with" in the top right. The first time each user does this, it'll ask to allow your Confluence server to use Companion.

Let me know how it goes!

-Josh

comments: author: Jeff Kell
body: Thanks for the reply. Here at BIG-CORP-XYZ... we can't just install any .exe or .msi without first getting approvals so working on that now. Hopefully it doesn't become a big hurdle internally for us.  

I also see some plugins for a fee that do similar. These I assume would not require the Companion installation. We did NOT need to have a Companion (or similar) installed with the 5.8.6 version to get this to work, so I'm not sure how it did work. Do you know?

Thanks.


author: josh
body: That's a shame - I'm not sure how the old one worked exactly, but I think the new one has the advantage of working with more file formats than just MS Office as well.


author: Jeff Kell
body: Hi, thanks for the feedback. It takes our company a while to approve using downloaded software. I finally am able to try the Atlassian Companion.exe file usage along with Confluence 6.13.0 and it seems ok in Chrome Browser.  

I've attempted with both Edge and IE and they always want me to download Atlassian Companion again...rather than say "Edit with Excel 2016" or whatever upon previewing the document. This is even after installing the .exe on 2 different PCs. Only Chrome for me seems to work. I suspect most of our users use Edge or IE instead. Any ideas what the difference is here? I did try a restart on one PC to see if that helps Edge and IE and it does not. I see Atlassian Companion startup at boot time but those 2 browsers don't seem to want to interact with it. Any thoughts?


Tags: companion-app