When saving updates to a page, Confluence displays: "There was an error processing the request." message
Platform notice: Server and Data Center only. This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Server and Data Center platforms.
Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Summary
This error occurs when Confluence is unable to convert content contained within the page editor into the format which is stored in the database.
Diagnosis
While Confluence will display a "There was an error processing the request." message in the UI, the application logs will contain an error like the following:
2020-07-02 10:36:17,875 WARN [http-nio-8090-exec-41] [confluence.tinymceplugin.rest.DraftsResource] save The supplied editor content could not be converted to storage format.
-- referer: https://wonderwiki.com/pages/resumedraft.action?draftId=155911470&draftShareId=9ab03531-1365-47f3-81cb-6c3706cc01f0 | url: /rest/tinymce/1/drafts | traceId: 88960e0d8ea2e8bc | userName: willy
com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.XhtmlException: RuntimeException occurred while transforming editor format to storage format (null)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.editor.EditorXhtmlTransformer.transform(EditorXhtmlTransformer.java:58)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.TransformerChain.transform(TransformerChain.java:33)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.TransformerChain.transform(TransformerChain.java:33)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.PluggableTransformerChain.transform(PluggableTransformerChain.java:39)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.editor.DefaultEditorConverter.convert(DefaultEditorConverter.java:37)
Cause
While the exact cause is unknown, it appears that this problem results when copying and pasting certain content into the page that includes a character or characters that Confluence can't handle properly.
Solution
A couple of possible workarounds exist for this particular issue:
- If the page is published, please try copying the page's content to another new page and then reintroduce any unpublished changes. You could do this for the whole page at once or in sections.
- Alternatively, download and install the free Source Editor plugin and then try either:
- Editing the page using the Source Editor and saving, or
- Copying the page's content from the Source Editor to an external editor and then copying and pasting the content back to Source Editor and then saving the page