Purpose

As a Confluence administrator, you might need to manually change the license directly in confluence.cfg.xml  file for any number of reasons including:

• upgrades are failing
• the license is corrupted
• the license cannot be changed in the Confluence UI
• etc

Solution

If that is the case, please, follow below steps to achieve it: 

1. Install a new instance of Confluence using the same Confluence version.
   • Be sure to use the license listed at https://my.atlassian.com
   • You can use the embedded HSQL database for this step as we just need the license information.
   • This new install doesn't have to run on the same server where the license needs to be applied.

2. After you have completed all steps in the Confluence setup wizard, open this new instance's <confluence_home>/confluence.cfg.xml file.  

3. Identify the properties below:

   <property name="atlassian.license.hash">xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx</property>
   <property name="atlassian.license.message">yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy</property>

   Some versions of Confluence do not require a hashed license. In these versions, you simply need to edit the confluence.license.message property

4. Copy these properties into the original <confluence_home>/confluence.cfg.xml file replacing the information already there
5. Start Confluence.
6. Feel free to delete the temporary instance at this point.