Purpose

So creating PDF exports in Confluence can impact and seriously degrade system performance, as described in the KB article: Exporting page or space to PDF fails and causes high load or OutOfMemory Error. To prevent performance issues, you may wish to limit the ability to export within Confluence to System Administrators and Space Administrators only, or disable the ability all together. 

Solution

Disable Only PDF Space Exports

PDF Space exports can be entirely disabled with the below steps

1. Navigate to  » Manage Apps
2. Select "System"  from the drop down.
3. Search for Confluence PDF Export Plugin
4. Locate the Confluence PDF Export plugin and expand the view. 
5. Click 18 of 18 modules enabled to expand the module list.
6. Mouse over XML Export Format.
7. Click Disable on the right side.
8.  PDF Space exports are now disabled globally.

Restrict Overall Space Exports to Confluence Administrators and Space Administrators

Create default Space Permissions for new Spaces

1. Go to  »  General Configuration » Space Permissions.
2. Click the Edit Permissions button.
3. Edit the Default Permissions for the confluence-users group
4. Uncheck the Space/Export permission
5. Click Save

Change Permissions on existing Spaces

1. Go to  »  General Configuration » Space Permissions.
2. Select Manage Permissions link.
   1. This will need to be done for each Space individually
3. Click the Edit Permissions button to remove the Export permission from the group confluence-users.
4. Click Save.