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CAUTION: Restoring a backup of an entire confluence site (consisting of multiple spaces) will:

  • Wipe out all Confluence content in the database. Ensure that your database is backed up.
  • Log you out after the restore process. Make sure you know your login details contained in the data being restored.

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

Atlassian suggests establishing the Production Backup Strategy for a production instance of Confluence as confluence xml backups are not recommended for non-evaluation instances.

Confluence supports backward compatibility for site backups. (But not for space backups). You can only successfully restore backups of a site from an older version of Confluence to a newer version of Confluence. For example, if you create a site backup in Confluence 2.4.3, it cannot be restored into a Confluence 2.2.2 instance. It can however, be restored into 2.4.5 or 2.5.x, because 2.4.5 and 2.5.x are newer versions of Confluence.

There are two ways to restore a site from a backup file:

  1. Restore a site from the Confluence Setup Wizard: This restores the data into a new instance of Confluence.
  2. Restore a site from the Administration Console: This restores data into the current instance of Confluence.

If your daily backup zips cannot be restored for whatever reason, but you have backups of both your database and your Confluence home directory, then it is still possible to restore from these backups.

Selective space restore not possible

You cannot select a single space to restore from the entire site backup when the backup contains more than one space.

RELATED TOPICS

Page: Restoring Data from the Administration Console
Page: Restoring a Site
Page: Manually Backing Up The Site
Page: Restoring from Backup During Setup
Page: Restoring a Space

7 Comments

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  1. May 09, 2007

    Private Name

    It Seems to me that backward compatibility is not fully usable :
    restoring a space from a 2.2.8 to a 2.4.4 gives : Restore denied. You can only restore space backups exported from the same major version (e.g. 2.2.x or 2.3.x).

    1. May 09, 2007

      Rosie Jameson [Atlassian Technical Writer]

      Please note that backward compatibility only applies when restoring a full site, not an individual space.

  2. Jun 10, 2009

    Anonymous

    I just trying to upgrade from 2.7.1 to 3.0.0. But using the setup assistant to restore from a daily full backup archive i just got a

    [FileUnzipper] The file: exportDescriptor.properties could not be found in the archive: /foo/bar/confluence-backup.prod.20090610.zip

    and indeed, there isn't such a file. How to proceed?

    1. Jun 10, 2009

      Dr. Guido Jäkel

      You may delete this thread. I discovered, that our backups are broken since about one month: The files exportDescriptor.properties and entities.xml are not include, just the attachements.

      This might be related with the version of the endorsed Java-XML-Libs, because currently the PDF export also fails with some XSLT-FO-exception.

      I'm testing the migration step with an older, but proper backup and this job starts running.

    2. Jun 10, 2009

      Anonymous

      Hi,

       you can use alternative way of restoring jira.

      it is very simple way to restore from database back or alternative way.

      Please let me know if you don't know how to restore using alternative way you can get in touch with from dknitk@rediffmail.com

      Thanks,

      Dharmendra

  3. Feb 17, 2010

    Pat Birgan

    Hi - I have an XML zipped file from a GovDex (Australian Government Confluence site) Space Export. I am trying to import into a hosted Confluence site and get the error ...

    Restore denied. You can only restore space backups exported from the same major version (e.g. 2.2.x or 2.3.x).

    Any advice on how I can get this imported? I am trying to use the wiki convertor but Confluence is not one of the option. getting very frustrated! Please help.

    1. Feb 24, 2010

      Azwandi Mohd Aris [Atlassian]

      Hi Pat,

      The error message suggests that the space backup was created from a major version that is not as same as your Confluence version. For instance, the space backup could have been exported from Confluence 2.8.2 while your instance is Confluence 2.9.3.

      For more information on this compatibility, please refer to this page. It also suggests a workaround for this:

      You'll need to set up a test server of the same version and import the space, then upgrade your test installation so it's the right major version so that you can perform the export and import successfully. Otherwise, you can try to Change the version of the space export, but please try this on a test instance as well.

      Hope that helps.

      Cheers,
      Azwandi