Symptoms

When viewing a page, it will not render and we receive the following error in the user interface.

The following appears in the atlassian-confluence.log:

Error: The XML content could not be parsed. There is a problem at
line x, column y. Parser message: String ']]>' not allowed in
textual content, except as the end marker of CDATA section at [row,col
 
{unknown-source}
]: [x,y] 

Cause 1

This happens due to an existing character which conflicts with XML standards. The offending character appears in the error message as String ']]>' from the above log entry.  In this example, '>' is the offending character. 

Cause 2

This error can also be caused by a NULL value in bodytypeid after the XHTML Migration when upgrading Confluence. Running the following query will identify pages that are affected by this problem:

SELECT *
FROM BODYCONTENT
WHERE contentid IN (
    SELECT c.contentid FROM CONTENT AS c WHERE CONTENTTYPE IN ('PAGE', 'COMMENT', 'BLOGPOST')
)
  AND bodytypeid IS NULL;

Resolution 1

SELECT c.contentid, c.title, s.spacekey, bc.body 
FROM CONTENT c JOIN BODYCONTENT bc 
ON c.contentid = bc.contentid JOIN SPACES s 
ON c.spaceid = s.spaceid 
WHERE c.prevver IS NULL 
AND c.contenttype IN ('PAGE', 'BLOGPOST') 
AND c.title LIKE '<pageName>' 
AND s.spacename LIKE '<spaceName>';

1. Install the Confluence source editor plugin
2. Navigate to the offending page and click ... > View Storage Format, to get storage format of the affected page
3. Copy the resultant text to the clipboard
4. On the same page click Edit > <>  to open the source editor    
5. Delete the existing content in the source editor
6. Paste the contents of the clipboard into the source editor
7. Find any instance of >  that is not being used in a proper XML tag and replace with &gt 
8. Save these changes

Resolution 2

 Before making any changes to your database, ensure that you have a full database backup and that Confluence is shut down. Then, execute the following query:

UPDATE
    BODYCONTENT
SET bodytypeid = 0
WHERE contentid IN (
    SELECT c.contentid FROM CONTENT AS c WHERE CONTENTTYPE IN ('PAGE', 'COMMENT', 'BLOGPOST')
)
  AND bodytypeid IS NULL;