Problem

Confluence takes around 5 to 10 minutes to generate a PDF export, even though the page is simple and only has a few lines of content.

Exporting the same page to a Word document is fast as expected.

In Confluence Data Center, the same behavior remains if the PDF export is conducted through the sandbox or not.

Diagnosis

Environment

• Confluence Server or Data Center.
• An outbound proxy is used to access Confluence.

Diagnostic Steps

• Try to generate a PDF from a page: Access a page > Click on the ellipsis icon > Export to PDF
• If the resulting PDF file never downloads and you have a proxy in front of Confluence, you might need to increase the proxy timeout.

Resolution

Make sure the outbound proxy is properly configured on the Confluence side. Refer to the following KBs for that task:

• How to Configure Outbound HTTP and HTTPS Proxy for your Atlassian application
• Jira server ignores http.nonProxyHosts JVM option

Add an entry in the hosts file of the Confluence server:

• hosts file location:
  • Linux: /etc/hosts
  • Windows: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

• Edit the hosts file and add this entry:

  127.0.0.1	my.confluence.domain

   Write only the domain name, do not include the protocol (http/https) neither the context path.

• Save the file and test the export again.

If running Confluence on a version below 6.13.0 and the PDF export is still slow after implementing the above changes, you may need to upgrade your Confluence instance due to bug CONFSERVER-44995 - Getting issue details... STATUS .

Related content

If no outbound proxy is used to access Confluence, you may refer to Confluence times out when trying to export a page to PDF.