How can I rename a Wiki group?
Asked by Nariman Riahi:

I need to change name of 3 groups in Wiki. I do not see an option to rename a group. Is there a way to do this anyway?

Do I need to create a group with the NEW name and add users to it and then remove the other group? (painful).

I really hope that there is a easy way.

thanks


Answers:
author: RianA
body: Hi,

Unfortunately until now there's no straight forward way to do so. It has been raised as Improvement request here: [CONF-9159](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-9159) and its related improvement request in JIRA: [JRA-1391](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-1391). I would suggest you to delete the group and recreate again for now, as it's the easiest and safest way. We don't recommend you to change it from database side as there are a lot of mapping between the content and permission to the group. If the group is in the LDAP, you could rename it from there, and re sync it back to Confluence. Hope this helps.

-Josua


author: Matthew J. Horn
body: There's a GROUPS table, with the field GROUPNAME, in the database. As long as no other tables key off that field (and I don't think any do), you should be able to change it there.

comments: author: Thomas Wendel
body: Matthew,

This is definitely not a good idea!

The table "groups" seems to be a legacy group which is no longer used in Confluence. Confluence uses now a table called "cwd_group" to store groups.

Unfortunately, there are other tables which use group-names (instead of IDs) to reference groups: There are at least two that I know of: "SPACEPERMISSIONS" and "CONTENT_PERM". And there might be even more tables which contain group-names.

Cheers,

Thomas


author: Nariman Riahi
body: So to solve this issue; Is there any easy way to add memebers of one group to a new group. (The existing groups have more than 100 memebers)


author: Thomas Wendel
body: You could try to get the list of users of the first group into a comma separated file using the [User List Macro](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/User+List+Macro).

In a second step you can add the users from that list to the new group using Bob Swifts [Confluence Command Line Interface](https://bobswift.atlassian.net/wiki/display/CSOAP/Documentation).


author: Mick Davidson
body: Thomas, thanks. :)


author: Thomas Wendel
body: No, this has no affect on any content these users have made.


author: Mick Davidson
body: A further quesion on this:

If I delete the existing group and add a new one, along with the users from the deleted group, will this affect any contributions the users have made?

I can't imagine it, but want it confirmed before I do anything drastic and undoable. :)

Cheers.


author: Thomas Wendel
body: Matthew,

This is definitely not a good idea!

The table "groups" seems to be a legacy group which is no longer used in Confluence. Confluence uses now a table called "cwd_group" to store groups.

Unfortunately, there are other tables which use group-names (instead of IDs) to reference groups: There are at least two that I know of: "SPACEPERMISSIONS" and "CONTENT_PERM". And there might be even more tables which contain group-names.

Cheers,

Thomas