This documentation relates to Confluence 3.1.x
If you are using an earlier version, please view the previous versions of the Confluence documentation and select the relevant version.

Moving Pages within a Space

This page tells you how to move one or more pages within a space using the space's 'Tree' view. This view allows you to:

  • Move either a single page or a family of pages, within a space. When a family of pages is moved, the entire hierarchy of child and descendent pages of the moved page (including comments and attachments) is also maintained.
  • Re-order sibling pages (that is, pages with a common parent page).
  • Move more than one page in one setting.

Alternatively, if you are viewing, adding or editing a page, you can easily move this page (including its family of any child and descendent pages) to a new parent page within the same space or a different space. For more information, refer to Moving a Page.
This feature is very handy when moving a page or family of pages throughout a very large space, as moving pages via the 'Tree' view can be cumbersome to use in these situations.

To move a page, you need the following permissions:

  • Edit permission on the page you are moving, and
  • View permission on the page's parent page. So if you are moving the page to a different parent, you need 'View' permission on the new parent.

On this page:

About the Sequential Order of Pages

Confluence allows you to present your pages in any order (sequence) you choose. The position of a page is reflected in the following places:

Alphabetical versus Manual Order

By default, Confluence will present your pages in alphabetical order. When you move a page to a different position, the order becomes manual for the affected page family.

When ordering pages alphabetically, Confluence actually applies a more sophisticated 'natural' order rather than a straight alphabetical order. The natural order handles numeric values correctly when doing string comparisons.

Now let's consider what happens when you add a page to a page family, by creating a new page or by moving or copying a page into the family:

  • If the page family's order is alphabetical, the new page will appear in alphabetical order too.
  • If the page family's order is manual, the new page will appear at the bottom of the list of pages in the family.
Changing the Page Order

You can change the order of the pages by moving pages within the page family — simply move the page to its new position while editing the page (see Moving a Page) or while viewing pages in the space's 'Tree' view (see Moving Pages within a Space).

You can also change the order of a page-family from manual to alphabetical (see the 'Setting Page Order to Alphabetical' section on Setting a Page Family to Alphabetical Order).

Moving Pages

To move one or more pages within the space's 'Tree' view,

  1. Go to the 'Space Pages' view for the current space. To do this:

    • Go to a page in the space, open the 'Browse' menu and select 'Pages'. The 'Space Pages' view will open.

  2. Go to the 'Tree' tab. A tree view opens.

  3. Find the page you want to move.
    Hint: Click the '+' sign next to each page family to open the branches of the tree.

  4. Holding down your left mouse button, click and drag the page up or down the tree. See screenshot below.

  5. While dragging the page, you see one of the following:
    • A thin line between existing pages — This indicates the potential new position for the page. Release the mouse button when the page is where you want it.
    • A wide highlight over one or more existing pages — This indicates that you can drop the page into a page family. Release the mouse button to add the page to the family. The page will appear either in alphabetical sequence or as the last page in the family, depending on the family's sequential order as described below.

      The new position of the page is saved as soon as you release the mouse button.
      To cancel the move while still holding down the mouse button, press the 'Esc' key on your keyboard.

      To move other pages, repeat this process from step 3.



Screenshot: Moving a page

Setting Page Order to Alphabetical

If the pages in a page family have been ordered manually, you can reset the page order to alphabetical as described below.

A page family is a set of pages under a single parent page. In this section, when we say 'page family' we mean the immediate children of the parent page, not including the grand-children.

The screenshot below shows a family of pages in non-alphabetical order under the parent 'Sample Page'. Notice the icon next to the parent 'Sample Page', giving you the option to order the pages alphabetically.

Screenshot: A family of pages in non-alphabetical order with 'Sort Alphabetically' icon



To set a page family to alphabetical order,

  1. Go to the 'Space Pages' view for the current space. To do this:

    • Go to a page in the space, open the 'Browse' menu and select 'Pages'. The 'Space Pages' view will open.
  2. Go to the 'Tree' tab. The tree view will open, as shown in the screenshot above.
  3. Expand the branches of the tree to find the page family you want.
  4. If the page family is in non-alphabetical (manual) order, the 'Sort Alphabetically' icon will appear next to the parent page as shown in the screenshot above. Click the icon.
  5. The child pages will shuffle into alphabetical order and the icon will change to the 'Undo Sorting' icon as shown in the screenshot below.
    Only the immediate children of the parent page will be affected. The grand-children will not be re-ordered. (If you want to re-order the grand-children, you need to click the 'Sort Alphabetically' icon next to the parent of those pages i.e. re-ordering happens for one node at a time.)

Screenshot: A family of pages in alphabetical order with 'Undo Sorting' icon



If you change your mind, you can click the 'Undo Sorting' icon to undo the alphabetical sort. This option is only available while you remain on the 'Tree' tab and provided that you have not performed any other action on the page family. Once you move away from this screen or do something else with the page family, such as moving children in or out of the family, the undo option is no longer available.

Troubleshooting

  • Some people have experienced problems using the tree to move pages, after upgrading to Confluence 2.9. This is a known issue, that was fixed in Confluence 2.9.1. There is also a workaround for those who do not wish to upgrade to Confluence 2.9.1. Please see CONF-12911.
RELATED TOPICS

Moving a Page
Overview of Pages
Overview of Page Families

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Comments (6)

 

  1. Mar 19, 2009

    Jim Birch says:

    Is it possible to disable this feature, or limit who can do it?

    Is it possible to disable this feature, or limit who can do it?

    1. Mar 20, 2009

      Azwandi Mohd Aris [Atlassian] says:

      Hi Jim, There is no direct permission option that can be turned on to achieve t...

      Hi Jim,

      There is no direct permission option that can be turned on to achieve this requirement. However, a user will need this permission set in order to move the pages successfully:

      • Edit permission on the page you are moving, and
      • View permission on the page's parent page. So if you are moving the page to a different parent, you need 'View' permission on the new parent.

      Hope that helps!

  2. Apr 08, 2009

    Anonymous says:

    Are there any plugins that allow you to type in the name of the parent page?&nbs...

    Are there any plugins that allow you to type in the name of the parent page?  I find this UI usless -- we have 1000s of pages - I always know the name of the page I want to be the parent, I don't always know the location in the hierarchy.  Finding the right location is particularly frustrating with deeper hiearchies. Additionally, making the move happen immediatly when you release the mouse button is fraught with danger.

    1. Apr 08, 2009

      Ming Giet Chong says:

      Hi, The Pagetree Macro might be helpful for you. It allows you to define the pa...

      Hi,

      The Pagetree Macro might be helpful for you. It allows you to define the parent page, list all the children pages underneath and search the pages through the tree.

      Hope this helps.

      Regards,
      MG

  3. Apr 24, 2009

    Sally Duval says:

    In the List Pages - Tree View (version 2.8.2), the message "You can move any pag...

    In the List Pages - Tree View (version 2.8.2), the message "You can move any page by dragging it to a new position in the tree." appears only for users with rights to edit the space. Users with edit page permission can move pages, but they do not see the message. If this has not already been fixed in a later version, you may want to add it to your list.

    This is a cool feature, but we've got some new users who have moved pages by mistake. I see that there is an undo button for the sorting, but it might also be nice to have an undo button for pages moved by mistake.

    1. May 20, 2009

      Arie Murdianto says:

      Hi, There is a similar feature request has been raised up in the following issu...

      Hi,

      There is a similar feature request has been raised up in the following issue:

      Please feel free to add yourself as a watcher to receive notification for the update. You can cast a vote to increase the popularity of the issue.

      Cheers,

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