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All Confluence UI text is contained in a single Java properties file. This file can be modified to change the default text, and also to translate Confluence into other languages than English.

The UI text file is ConfluenceActionSupport.properties. From your Confluence install directory:

\confluence\WEB-INF\lib\confluence-3.x.jar

Within this File, the relevant file to edit is :\com\atlassian\confluence\core\ConfluenceActionSupport.properties.

Refer to Editing jar files for reference.

 

(warning) The information on this page does not apply to Confluence OnDemand.

The file contains parameters with name=value pairs, in the format:

parameter.name=Parameter value

Parameter names are any text before the '=' character and should never be modified. Any text after the '=' character is the parameter value, which can be modified freely and can also contain variables. An example involving variables is:

popular.labels=The three most popular labels are {0}, {1} and {2}.

For more information on replacing values, check out Translating ConfluenceActionSupport Content​. Note that plugins store their text internally, so you must modify plugin text individually.

Steps For Modification

  1. Stop Confluence
  2. Under your install directory, open \confluence\WEB-INF\lib\confluence-3.x.jar\com\atlassian\confluence\core\ConfluenceActionSupport.properties

  3. Search for the text you wish to modify, replace it and save the file in <Confluence-Install>\confluence\WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian\confluence\core. Please create this folder structure, if it does not exist already.

    If you re-bundle the JAR file, rather than re-deploy the class in the WEB-INF\classes directory, make sure to move the backup JAR file out of the /lib directory, or the backup may be deployed by mistake.

  4. Restart Confluence

Common Modifications

  • Rename 'Dashboard' by searching for Dashboard. To change "Dashboard" to "My Portal", change dashboard.name=Dashboard to dashboard.name=My Portal

Common Modifications

Task

Search For

Notes

Rename 'Dashboard'

Dashboard

The dashboard.name parameter has the name. To change 'Dashboard' to 'My Portal', change dashboard.name=Dashboard to dashboard.name=My Portal and update any other occurrences of the word 'Dashboard' in the instance

Modify login page text

login.

The login.instructions parameter has the "Enter your account details below to login to Confluence" text

Modify Keyboard Shortcuts

Confluence provides a set of keyboard shortcuts. You could customise the shortcuts by making modifications inside the ConfluenceActionSupport.properties file.

  • To disable a particular shortcut, you can simply just comment out a respective line of code. One may like to disable the shortcut to one of the navigation links: View, Edit, Attachments, Info . For instance, to disable shortcut to Attachmentsone would comment out the following line:

  • To modify an access key, one could simply just change the letter, bearing in mind the fact that the letter must be unique.

37 Comments

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  1. Apr 30, 2007

    Jared

    This seems like bad design... any time I upgrade Confluence, I have to be careful not to wipe out any customized text. Shouldn't any customized strings be stored outside the Confluence install directory?

    I've created a Jira issue here.

  2. Oct 09, 2007

    Anonymous

    I have tried the above, but I cannot seem to find that directory. It stops right before /core

     Has anyone else had this issue?

    Thanks,

    Nicole

    1. Oct 09, 2007

      Mei Yan Chan

      Hi,

      This file had been archived in the confluence-2.6.0.jar at /WEB-INF/lib. This only applies to version 2.6.

      Regards,
      Mei

      1. Oct 10, 2007

        Anonymous

        Hi,

        Thanks so much!

        Nicole 

      2. Oct 10, 2007

        Anonymous

        Hi Mei,

        I found the file and changed dashboard.name=Dashboard to dashboard.name=Home

        Problem is that I now cannot login to Confluence at all. I get a system error rather than the login page. When i revert to the original .jar, I can login just fine. I've compared the two files (changed vs original), and the only difference is the name change.

        Has anyone else had any problems with this? Do I need to change anything else?

        thanks,

        Nicole

        1. Oct 10, 2007

          Mei Yan Chan

          Hi Nicole,

          Would you be able to raise a support request at the following link and attach the file that you have modified. I will try to replicate the problem in our system locally. Thanks.

          Regards,
          Mei

          1. Oct 15, 2007

            Pranav Olkar

            I hope ConfluenceActionSupport.properties will not be wrapped in a jar furtheron !! I need to make a lot of changes in this file.And it will be troublesome to always create a new jar !!

            Having said that, I am now confused on this interesting topic from the first comment on this page here, particularly Charles Miller's comments.Is this the first step towards what he says? Will I be able to customise the text from UI?

            ... I am scheduled to go on production with the wiki2.6 upgrade in the last week of this month..... 

            1. Oct 16, 2007

              Mei Yan Chan

              Hi Pranav,

              There's no need to keep creating new jars whenyou can directly create a path directory to store these files once extracted. For more information, please see:

              Regards,
              Mei

              1. Oct 16, 2007

                Pranav Olkar

                Hi Mei,

                Thanks for the update.Modifying ConfluenceActionSupport.properties and then creating a jar file and updating it in WEB-INF/lib did not work for me too ! I got the tomcat error message "requested resource is not available" .As soon as I changed it to the original Confluence-2.6.0.jar and restarted the server, I was able to get the login screen.So I tried the other method, created the directory core  in <confluence-install>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/confluence/ and pasted my modified ConfluenceActionSupport.properties file in this directory.Restarting the server , it worked and I was able to see my modified text !

                -- Pranav

                1. Jul 19, 2010

                  Anonymous

                  Hi,

                  Did anybody tried this in new version of confluence i.e. 3.3. It didnt work for me

                  Thanks,

                  Amar

                  1. Aug 06, 2010

                    Sashidaran Jayaraman [Atlassian]

                    Hi Amar,

                    I have just tested this, and it works fine in Confluence 3.3. Please follow the instruction in this page carefully once more. If problem persists, please raise a support ticket to https://support.atlassian.com, so that your issue can be further investigated.

                    Cheers
                    JSashi

  3. Oct 16, 2007

    Craig Bonsignore

    I second that motion!! I'm in 2.6, and have no way to change the text on the login screen, which is quite an important thing. Hope to see a workaround posted here soon...

  4. Jan 14, 2008

    Vika Laichuk

    Hello,

    I use Confluence 2.7 and I want to change text on the login page.

    I cannot find file   \confluence\WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian\confluence\core\ConfluenceActionSupport.properties, because I don't have "core" subfolder at all.

    Please, give me exact instructions how can I edit login text.

    Thanks,

    Vika. 

    1. Jan 14, 2008

      Choy Li Tham

      Hi Vika,

      In Confluence version 2.6.x onwards, the ConfluenceActionSupport.properties file is now available in the confluence-2.x.x.jar file located in the <confluence-install>/WEB-INF/lib directory. You may want to give a try to perform the steps below to see if it helps:

      1. Stop Confluence.
      2. Make a backup of confluence-2.x.x.jar file.
      3. Extract the copied confluence-2.x.x.jar file.
      4. Locate the ConfluenceActionSupport.properties file from the copied confluence-2.x.x.jar file.
      5. Edit the file.
      6. Manually create the directory path accordingly. An example would be: 
        <confluence_install>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/confluence/core
      7. Locate the edited file onto the directory above.
      8. Re-start Confluence.

      Meanwhile, I found that you have raised a support request at the following link:

      If you have any doubt regarding this question, please follow up through the support ticket above. Thanks.

      Regards,
      Choy Li

      1. Jan 14, 2008

        Paul Curren

        The steps are correct above although you can simplify steps 3 - 7 by using the jar command in a manner like -

        jar xf confluence-2.x.x.jar com/atlassian/confluence/core/ConfluenceActionSupport.properties

        If you run this command in .../WEB-INF/classes then the necessary directory structure will be automatically created as the file is extracted.

        1. Dec 10, 2008

          Bill Endow

          Thanks, Paul. I'm one of the many Microsoft people who's clueless about the Java world, and there's no way I would have figured this out without your comment. I've actually copied it and put it into our internal support docs.

          1. May 18, 2009

            Ben Aveling

            I don't think you need to rebuild the jar. It should be enough to extract the properties file into /Confluence/2.x.x/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/confluence/core and then make the changes you want. What would be nicer would be if any strings not found in that version of the properties file would be extracted in the version in the jar, but it doesn't seem to work that way.

            1. May 21, 2009

              Arie Murdianto

              That is another way to perform the changes of the text via properties file. You can rebuild the jar also (using jar tool), thus the file will be bundled in the jar file. It will be more clean to have all the things being packed inside the jar file.

              If the string cannot be found in the properties file located in directory Confluence/2.x.x/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/confluence/core, Confluence wont load another properties file with the same name. Because it has been found in Confluence/2.x.x/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/confluence/core. The first loaded properties file would be the reference of confluence to load.

              Cheers,

        2. Aug 25, 2009

          Anonymous

          How about for 3.0?
          I get this file not found error:
          C:\confluence-3.0.0_01-std\confluence\WEB-INF\classes>"\Program Files\Java\jdk1.
          6.0_10\bin\jar.exe" xf ..\confluence-3.0.0_01.jar com/atlassian/confluence/core/
          ConfluenceActionSupport.properties
          java.io.FileNotFoundException: ..\confluence-3.0.0_01.jar (The system cannot fin
          d the file specified)
          at java.io.FileInputStream.open(Native Method)
          at java.io.FileInputStream.<init>(FileInputStream.java:106)
          at java.io.FileInputStream.<init>(FileInputStream.java:66)
          at sun.tools.jar.Main.run(Main.java:205)
          at sun.tools.jar.Main.main(Main.java:1022)

          1. Aug 25, 2009

            Sashidaran Jayaraman [Atlassian]

            Hi,

            I guess the problem lies in the path that you have specified in the above line. The confluence-3.0.0_01.jar is located at <confluence-install>/confluence/WEB-INF/lib/confluence-3.0.0_01.jar.

            Therefore, if you are currently at C:\confluence-3.0.0_01-std\confluence\WEB-INF\classes, the correct line should be:

            Hope this helps

            Cheers
            JSashi

      2. Jan 30, 2008

        Jim Barrick

        This procedure only partially works for 2.71 when modifying the single line in the properties file "Dashboard.name" property to be "Portal" as shown below. While a change occurs in the  UI breadcrumb, the phrase "dashboard" does not change on the home page itself. 

        ## Global - Commonly used entity names
        group.name=Group
        groups.name=Groups
        user.name=User
        username.name=Username
        users.name=Users
        administration.name=Administration
        comment.name=Comment
        dashboard.name=Portal
        labels.name=Labels
        anonymous.name=Anonymous

        Any suggestions as to how to change the page content itself?

        1. Jan 30, 2008

          Choy Li Tham

          Hi Jim,

          Did you meant to say that you would like to change the Dashboard title which is next to the Confluence logo in the Confluence dashboard page? If that is the case, you may want to look into the following section in the ConfluenceActionSupport.properties file and change the dashboard title from there:

          ################################################################
# ACTION:   DashboardAction
################################################################

          Please give it a try and further clarify if I have misinterpreted your question.

          Regards,
          Choy Li

  5. Feb 02, 2008

    Jim Barrick

    Yes, I overlooked this section, but when I made changes as you suggested, the changes I want work perfectly (smile)

    Jim

    1. Feb 22, 2008

      Mark Malinoski

      Is there a way to make this change in a hosted instance?  I'm working with Enterprise hosted Confluence 2.71.

      1. Feb 25, 2008

        Choy Li Tham

        Hi Mark,

        There is no workaround that I can think of to fulfill your requirement. However, if you are keen on the customization, you can raise a support request at the following Confluence Hosted Issue Tracker to truly reflect your request:

        Regards,
        Choy Li

  6. May 15, 2009

    Anonymous


    What's the syntax to comment out code that would display?

    1. May 20, 2009

      Arie Murdianto

      I assume that you ask about how to comment out velocity's code or properties code. If you are trying to comment out velocity code, you can use ##. If you are trying to comment you .properties file, you can try to use #.

      Cheers,

  7. Aug 31, 2009

    Ben Aveling

    I can get this to work by going direct to the file system. But I can't seem to get it to work from inside a plugin?

  8. Aug 31, 2009

    Ben Aveling

    You don't need to restart the server - if you navigate to Language Configuration and then select another language, then select your preferred language, it will load your changes. A bit ugly, but it works.

    1. Sep 01, 2009

      Ben Aveling

      At least under some circumstances.

  9. Sep 07, 2009

    Wilfried Rijsemus

    Can someone please explain to me why an email template resides inside a .jar file. It is THE instrument to communicate with my community and I can't even change the title let alone make a proper newsletter out of it like that from MSDN or Ajaxian. This is such a technical solution totally void of the world that moves on and uses wiki as a social business tool. Would be nice if I get some control over this vital piece of communication.

  10. Jan 11, 2010

    Brian Desai

    Confluence 3.1 doesn't seem to use the login.instructions property anymore, contrary to what this page says.  Now I can no longer tell users which LDAP server to authenticate against!

    1. Jan 13, 2010

      Sashidaran Jayaraman [Atlassian]

      Hi Brian,

      You can use the login.instructions property in Confluence 3.1 by including it in <confluence-install>/confluence/login.vm. In the login.vm file, please add the following:

      just before this block of code:

      Hope this helps.

      Cheers
      JSashi

      1. Jan 13, 2010

        Brian Desai

        Thanks - that'll work!

      2. Jul 19, 2010

        Anonymous

        Hi JSashi,

        Can you be little more precise here please? I am sorry but where will be place login instructions under login.vm? Is this looking correct?<p>
        $action.getText("login.instructions= Please login using your LDAP credentials")
        </p>

        Thanks!

  11. Mar 29, 2010

    Richard Smith

    This may be an obvious thing to most folks, but it wasn't to me. 

    We modified a few text strings in the UI. It was nothing major, but we tweaked a few things to read the way we wanted. Then someone requested that we use the en_US global language. So I installed the en_US language plugin, and (though we didn't notice it immediately), it reverted many of our changes because UI text strings are redefined in the language/locale packs.

    So, if you have installed language packs, beware that you may need to make these changes in each language pack. Sounds obvious in retrospect, but it did bite us a little. 

      

  12. Jan 11, 2011

    Jordi Wauters

    I just upgraded to Confluence 3.4.6

    Does anyone know where to modify the Tab names like Favourite, Team and Global?

    I can't find them in the ConfluenceActionSupport.properties

    Thx!