Create, edit, and publish

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Pages are the content that makes up the information in a space.

In Confluence, you and your team can work on pages together. You can write at the same time, give each other feedback, and compare page versions to see what’s changed.

Pages are more than just words – you can also add macros like calendars, activity streams, and roadmaps to create powerful and dynamic pages that let you plan events, track sprint progress, maintain a knowledge base, and more.

Pages in your site may use the new editor or the legacy editor. This page explains how to use both editors.

Use these links to jump to the section detailing the editor you use:



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Which editor does your page use

When you edit a page, you can look over the toolbar for visual indicators, like the differences between the text color pickers, the inclusion of undo / redo buttons, or an emoji icon in the new editor toolbar. You'll also notice that the Publish and Close buttons were moved to the top right in the new editor.

New editor

Legacy editor

New editor

This section provides the details for creating, editing, and publishing content using the new editor.

Creating content

You can create a page from anywhere in Confluence—just select  in the navigation, and you're ready to go. If you like, you can select a template from the panel on the right so you don't have to start from scratch.

Once you decide on a blank page or template, you can start adding content to your page.

Creating content from the sidebar

Create blogs and pages in your space by using the + button next to the Blog or Pages sections in the space sidebar.


You can also create a page under another page using the contextual create button that appears when hovering over the page title in the sidebar.

Move a page

Adding pages contextually puts them where you want them to live from the start. Made a mistake or changed your mind? Use the drag and drop feature in the page tree to drag the page where you want it or use drag and drop to reorder the pages.

Can't create a page or blog?

To create a page or blog post, you need the Add Blog or Add page permissions for that space.


Collaborative editing

In real time, 12 teammates can edit a page together. Changes save and sync automatically so that everyone editing sees the same thing.

  1. Avatars — People who are currently editing have colored avatars, while people who made edits and left the page appear in greyscale.

  2. Invite to edit —Select the plus sign to invite others to edit your page with you from inside the editor. Either copy and send them the page link, or send them a Confluence notification, which will reach them via email and workbox.

Inline comments can be added while editing a page. Only those in your editing session can see, reply to, and resolve the comments. Once the page has been published, any unresolved comments can be seen by page viewers. See Comment on pages and blog posts.


Drafts

Confluence autosaves as you go whenever you're using the editor. This makes it easy to create a page and start scribbling and when you're ready to stop but not quite sure if you're going to do anything with it, you can just select Close in the editor without publishing. This creates a draft – an unpublished page or blog post that you can get back to at any time by heading to Recent > Drafts from the navigation.

Who can see your draft

No one can view your draft when you first create it. By default, drafts aren't findable — they don't show up in page trees and won't show up in search results. The only way someone can view your draft is if they have the URL to the draft, and the only way they'd have that is if you explicitly shared it with them.

If you share your draft's URL with someone, they'll be able to join you for some live collaborative editing!

Keep in mind, though, that once you share the link with someone, the link is out there. The person you shared with can themselves share the link with anyone they want, who can share the link with anyone, and so on.

If you shared your draft's URL with someone and don't want them to be able to access it anymore, you can change the draft's permissions to control who among those who might have the link can successfully access the page. You can change the draft's permissions by selecting the lock icon next to Publish.


tip/resting Created with Sketch.

We recommend only keeping your work as a draft when it's in a very early stage. This is because changes can't be tracked in a draft, and you can't roll back to previous editing sessions - both of which you can do for published pages.

Instead, we recommended you publish your page even while it's in mid-work, and do one of the following:

  • Insert the status element to mark your page work-in-progress — You could also change this to say under review, done, needs revising, looking for feedback, or any other step of your workflow.

  • Move your pages as you work — You can work on something in your personal space, and then once it's been polished, move it to the official space where it needs to be.

  • Restrict pages until ready — Working on something that you don't want everyone to know about until it's ready? Use page restrictions restrict your page while you work on it, and only share it widely once it's ready.

To delete a draft, select More actions ( ••• ) while editing, and select Delete unpublished page. Deleting a draft is permanent and can't be undone.

Delete a draft

  1. Delete unpublished page — Permanently deletes your draft.

  2. Close — Closes the editor, saving your draft.


Naming content in Confluence

To help your users find what they're looking for, give your pages, blogs, and attachments relevant, easy to search for names. Here are a few other things you should also keep in mind:

  • We recommend not using special characters in names, as they may not be found using Confluence search and can cause some Confluence functions to behave unexpectedly.
  • Unnamed drafts get called Untitled. Make sure you give pages a working name so you can tell your drafts apart.

Actions when editing

While you edit a previously published page, the following actions are available


  1. Publish without notifying watchers — Publish the page without triggering any notifications to people who are watching the space or the page.  This is really helpful when making small changes that don't warrant a notification.
  2. Publish with version comment — Comment about what you changed so it's easier to keep track of how a document is progressing. 
  3. Schedule publish — Set a date and time when you want the page to be published.  No notifications will happen until the page is published. 
  4. Publish as blog — Moves the page from the location where you created it to the list of blogs in the space you choose. All comments and likes will be carried over to the new blog. If you don’t want those comments to carry over, delete them before publishing.
  5. Preview — See what the published page will look like.
  6. View changes — See the changes to the page between the previously published version and now.  This will also let you see a summary of the changes which have happened during a collaborative editing session.
  7. Add labels — Tag the page with descriptive terms that can be used when searching or by macros added to pages and blogs.
  8. Resolved comments — If the page had inline comments that were resolved, you can see how many there are, and selecting this item displays all the comments that were resolved, who resolved them, and provides the ability to reopen the comment.
  9. Revert to last published version — Lets you close the page and discard any changes that were made since the last published version.


You can also open the Publish with version comment pop-up using a keyboard shortcut!

  • Mac — command + Shift + Enter                   
  • Windows — Ctrl + Shift + Enter


Publish

Confluence creates a new version of your work each time you edit and publish. This means that you can go back and see your page history, and, if necessary, revert back to a previous version of your work.

Publishing closes the editor and takes you back to viewing the page. Once a page is published, you can find it in the page tree, under the parent page from which it was created. If you publish a blog post, it will live in the blog, which is organized chronologically. It's easy to move and reorganize pages, so you don't have to worry if you've published to the wrong place.

Publish with version comment

Once you’ve decided to add a comment to the page or blog you are publishing, you can easily decide if your watchers get notified.

To notify people watching the page, select the Notify watchers checkbox. Any change comments you added are included in the notification email. The Notify watchers checkbox remembers your last selection for each page, so if you choose not to notify people, the checkbox will be deselected for you next time you edit that page. 

Change comments can be found in the page history.

To publish with a version comment

  1. Before publishing the page you've just updated, select ••• > Publish with version comment.

  2. Summarize what changed. This description is shown whenever someone views the page history.
  3. Decide if you want to notify watchers of this new version.  The comment will be included in the notification
  4. Select Publish.

Schedule publish

Sometimes a page or blog needs to published at the right moment to coincide with a project start, a product release, or a company announcement. Rather than relying on a calendar reminder or a sticky note, you can schedule it.

Before you publish the first time or the twenty-first time, you can set the date and time by going to ••• > Schedule publish.

No notifications are sent to those you’ve mentioned or those watching the page, blog, or the space until the content is actually published.

To make it really clear that the page or blog is set to be published at a certain day and time, the Publish button will change to Scheduled. A PUBLISH SCHEDULED indicator will be displayed at the top of the page and next to the page title in your list of Recent pages.

tip/resting Created with Sketch.

No worries if you have to make edits to a page or blog that is scheduled to publish later. The most recent version will be published when the scheduled publish time arrives.


To schedule your publish

  1. Go to the page and select ••• > Schedule publish

  2. Select the date and time

  3. Select Schedule. When the publish date and time has been set, the Publish button changes to Scheduled.

  4. Select the Scheduled button to modify the date and time or to remove the schedule.

Publish as blog

Composing the content of a blog, especially big important announcements, may take time and need input from others, or a page may evolve into something worthy of posting as a blog.

To make the transition from page to blog easier, you can publish your page as a blog rather than copying the page content into a blog.  Publishing as a blog can happen the first time you publish or the tenth time. 

To publish as blog

  1. Go to the page and select ••• > Publish as blog
  2. Select the space where the blog will be published
  3. Select Publish as blog

All comments and likes will be carried over to the new blog. If you don’t want those comments to carry over, delete them before publishing


Page versions and history

Version control is useful when you've got numerous people working on the same page. You can see how the page has changed over time, with each successive publish. You can also revert back to an old version if you decide you don't like some of the recent changes.

To delete a version of a page

  1. Go to the page and select ••• > Page History

  2. Select Delete next to the version you want to delete

Once you've deleted a version, the other versions will be re-numbered. For example, if you delete version 2, version 3 becomes the new version 2.

Deleting a page version is permanent. It won't be moved to the trash, so you can't restore a deleted version.


To restore a version of a page

  1. Go to the page and select ••• > Page History

  2. Select Restore this version beside the version you want to restore (or at the top of the page if you've opened the version)

  3. Change the default change comment if necessary, and select OK

All page history is retained, so if you decide to restore an old version, it won't delete any of the versions that came after it. Instead, Confluence creates a copy of that old version as the latest version.


To compare two versions

Want to see what's changed between versions? Use the comparison view to help you figure it out.

  1. Go to the page and select ••• > Page History

  2. Select the versions you want to compare by selecting the check boxes beside them

  3. Select Compare selected versions

You'll see the page comparison view showing the differences between the selected versions. To make the changes more distinguishable, all large sections of unchanged text are hidden and reduced to an ellipsis ( ••• ).

Editing and unpublished changes

If you want to edit a published page, you can select edit, or just type E to open the editor. As with a draft, autosave retains these changes, and you can get back to them by editing the page again.

Anyone else who edits that page also sees your unpublished changes. If you're concerned about this, add editing restrictions to the page until you're ready to publish those changes.

While a page has unpublished edits, Confluence displays an unpublished changes badge next to the page title, to remind you to publish. This only displays for people who've made unpublished changes, so you needn't worry about the badge distracting your viewers.

We recommend publishing frequently; each time you publish, Confluence creates a new version of your page or blog, which not only means that it's easier to track changes over time, but it's also easy to revert back to a previous version if you ever need.

View unpublished changes

Want to know what's changed since a page was last published? Select ••• > View changes.

Delete unpublished changes

If you're working on a page with unpublished changes, and decide you no longer need them, you can discard them by selecting ••• > Revert to last published version.

After giving you a chance to see what was changed, reverting immediately deletes those changes and restores the last published version. Those changes, as they were never published, are gone for good and can't be recovered. 





Legacy editor

This section provides the details for creating, editing, and publishing content using the legacy editor.

Creating content

You can create a page from anywhere in Confluence—just select  in the navigation in the global navigation, and you're ready to go. 

Confluence create page interface


 

  1. Parent page: Your new page will be a child of the page you were on when you select .
  2. Space: If you select  from outside of a space, you'll need to select a space for your page to live in, and your page will be created under that space's overview. The default option will be your personal space.
  3. Page templates: Choose what kind of page template you'd like to start with. Confluence comes with prepackaged templates, which you can alter to suit your needs on both a site-wide and space-wide basis. Any other templates you create will also appear here. Blog posts are slightly different in that they're not a template. They function just like pages, but instead of living in the page tree, they live in the blog roll where they're organised chronologically, and are ideal for sharing news and updates.

Once you decide on a blank page or template, you can start adding content to your page.

Creating content in the page tree

You can also create pages directly from the page tree. This makes it easy to control where your page lives, right from the start.

Simply hover over the page name, and click + to create a new subordinate page.

Move a page

Adding pages contextually puts them where you want them to live from the start. Made a mistake or changed your mind? Use the drag and drop feature in the page tree to drag the page where you want it or use drag and drop to reorder the pages.

Can't create a page or blog?

To create a page or blog post, you need the Add Blog or Add page permissions for that space.


Collaborative editing

You and up to 11 teammates can edit a page together in real time in Confluence.  Changes save and sync automatically, so that everyone editing sees the same thing. 

  1. Invite to edit: Click on the plus sign to invite others to edit your page with you from inside the editor. Either copy and send them the page link, or send them a Confluence notification which will reach them via email and workbox. 
  2. Avatars: People who are currently editing have colored avatars, while people who've made edits and left the page appear in greyscale. 

Drafts

If you've started scribbling and you're not quite sure if you're going to do anything with it, you can just close the editor without publishing. Confluence autosaves as you go, so this creates a draft – an unpublished page or blog post that you can get back to at any time by heading to Your work > Drafts from your sidebar. 

tip/resting Created with Sketch.

We recommend only keeping your work as a draft when it's in a very early stage. This is because changes can't be tracked in a draft, and you can't roll back to previous editing sessions - both of which you can do for published pages.  

Instead, it's recommended you publish your page even while it's in mid-work, and do one of the following:

  • Use a status macro to mark your page work-in-progress: You can also change this to say under reviewdoneneeds revisinglooking for feedback, or any other step of your workflow. 
  • Move your pages as you work: If you've got an external facing site, or if your team is writing something like policies for the rest of your organization, you can work on them in your team space, and then move them to an external facing space once they're done. Alternatively, you can work on something in your personal space, and then once it's been polished, move it to the official space that it needs to be under. 
  • Lock down pages until ready: Working on something that you don't want everyone to know about until it's ready? Lock down your page while you work on it, and only change the page restrictions once it's ready to go public. 

Drafts and privacy

Drafts don't have an actual location and don't show up in searches, so they start off invisible to anyone except the person who created them. If that person then shares the draft URL or invites others to edit that draft with them, those people will also be able to see and edit the draft.


Delete a draft 

To delete a draft, click the ••• while editing, and choose Delete unpublished page. Deleting a draft is permanent and can't be undone.  

  1. Delete unpublished page  Permanently deletes your draft.
  2. Close — Closes the editor, saving your draft.


Naming content in Confluence

To help your users find what they're looking for, give your pages, blogs, and attachments relevant, easy to search for names. Here are a few other things you should also keep in mind:

  • We recommend not using special characters in names, as they may not be found using Confluence search and can cause some Confluence functions to behave unexpectedly.
  • Unnamed drafts get called Untitled. Make sure you give pages a working name so you can tell your drafts apart.


Preview

As you edit, you can select ••• Preview for a peek at what your finished page will look like.

Publish

Publishing in Confluence is like saving a document in your word processor. Unlike a word processor, though, Confluence creates a new version of your work each time you edit and publish. This means that you can go back and see your page history, and, if necessary, revert back to a previous version of your work.

Publishing closes the editor and takes you back to viewing the page. Once a page is published, you can find it in the page tree, under the parent page from which it was created. If you publish a blog post, it will live in the blog, which is organized chronologically. It's easy to move and reorganize pages, so you don't have to worry if you've published to the wrong place. 


Change comments

Each time you publish a page, add a comment about what you changed so it's easier to keep track of how a document is progressing . Change comments can be found in the page history.

Notifying watchers

To notify people watching the page, from the ellipsis menu, select Notify watchers. Any change comments you added are included in the notification email. The Notify watchers checkbox remembers your last selection for each page, so if you choose not to notify people, the checkbox will be deselected for you next time you edit that page.  

Editing and unpublished changes

If you want to edit a published page, you can click edit, or just type E to open the editor. As with a draft, autosave will retain these changes, and you can get back to them by editing the page again. 

Anyone else who edits this page will also see your unpublished changes. If you're concerned about this, add editing restrictions to the page until you're ready to publish those changes. 

While a page has unpublished edits on it, Confluence will display an unpublished changes badge next to the page title, to remind you to publish. This only shows to people who've made unpublished changes, so you needn't worry about the badge distracting your viewers. 

We recommend publishing frequently, as each time you publish, Confluence creates a new version of your page or blog, which not only means that it's easier to track changes over time, but it's also easy to revert back to a previous version if you ever need. 


View unpublished changes

Want to know what's changed since a page was last published? Select •••  > View changes. 


Delete unpublished changes

If you're working on a page with unpublished changes, and decide you no longer need them, you can discard them by selecting ••• > Revert to last published version

This will immediately delete those changes and restore the last published version. Those changes, as they were never published, are gone for good and can't be recovered. 

Page versions and history 

Version control is useful when you've got numerous people working on the same page. You can see how the page has changed over time, with each successive publish. You can also revert back to an old version if you decide you don't like some of the recent changes. 

to delete a version of a page

  • Go to the page and choose Actions menu icon > Page History 
  • Choose Delete next to the version you want to delete

Once you've deleted a version, the other versions will be re-numbered. For example, if you delete version 2, version 3 becomes the new version 2.

Deleting a page version is permanent. It won't be moved to the trash, so you can't restore a deleted version.


To restore a version of a page

  1. Go to the page and choose Actions menu icon > Page History
  2. Choose Restore this version beside the version you want to restore (or at the top of the page if you've opened the version)
  3. Change the default change comment if necessary, and choose OK

All page history is retained, so if you decide to restore an old version, it won't delete any of the versions that came after it. Instead, Confluence creates a copy of that old version as the latest version.


To compare two versions

Want to see what's changed between versions? Use the comparison view to help you figure it out. 

  1. Go to the page and choose Actions menu icon > Page History
  2. Choose the versions you want to compare by selecting the check boxes beside them
  3. Choose Compare selected versions

You'll see the page comparison view showing the differences between the selected versions. To make the changes more distinguishable, all large sections of unchanged text are hidden and reduced to an ellipsis ( ••• ).

Last modified on Jun 19, 2023

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