Sometimes, two or more people may edit a page at the same time. When this happens, Confluence will do its best to ensure that nobody's changes are lost.
How will I know if someone else is editing the same page as I am?
If another user is editing the same page as you, Confluence will display a message above your edit screen letting you know who the other user is and when the last edit was made.
Screenshot: Notification of Simultaneous Page Editing
What happens if two of us are editing the same page and the other user saves before I do?
If someone else has saved the page before you, when you click 'Save', Confluence will check if there are any conflicts between your changes and theirs. If there are no conflicting changes, Confluence will merge both the edits successfully. If there are any conflicts, Confluence will display them for you and give you the option to either 'Overwrite' the other user's changes, 'Merge your changes' manually, or 'Discard' them.
Screenshot: Notification of Page Editing Conflict
Example Scenario
For example, Alice and Bob both edit the same page at the same time.
If Alice clicks save before Bob, Bob is now effectively editing an out-of-date version of the page. When Bob clicks save, Confluence will examine his changes to see if any overlap with Alice's. If the changes do not overlap (i.e. Alice and Bob edited different parts of the page), Bob's changes will be merged with Alice's automatically.
If Bob's changes overlap with Alice's, Confluence will display an error message to Bob showing where Alice has changed the page, and giving Bob the options to overwrite Alice's changes with his own, to re-edit the document to incorporate Alice's work, or to cancel his own changes entirely.
Related Topics
Page History and Page Comparison Views
Viewing Page Information
Working with Drafts
Take me back to Confluence User's Guide.
6 Comments
Hide/Show CommentsOct 04, 2010
Anonymous
In confluence 3.3, I don't see a merge option. Am I missing something, or by merge do you mean that I can cut & paste all the changes into the wiki editor box? If so, that's not really a merge. That's a "go fix it yourself" box.
Mar 23, 2011
Anonymous
Can we lock pages?? Rather than allowing anothe user to edit a page when a user is already editing that page? I found something in release notes for version 1.1 but just sort of explains the concept, it doesn't say how to switch from the "merge on conflict" mode to the "do not allow conflicts" mode.
HELP! :)
Apr 12, 2011
Anonymous
I would like to be able to "lock" the page if one person is editing. Anyway to do iths?
Apr 01, 2011
Anonymous
I'm not given the option to merge changes? Is this something I need to set up?
Dec 13, 2011
Anonymous
I hope you'll catch up to Google Docs some day and allow true concurrent editing. That would be a killer feature for a Wiki!
Jan 11, 2012
Anonymous
Catch up with google docs? Google docs is not that great. And you cannot compare Confluence and Google docs - they're completely different.
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