You can copy the content and settings of public and personal spaces across your Confluence instance. The ability to copy spaces provides you with full control, growth, and maintenance of the content that you’re storing in Confluence. Plus, scaling up your instance will become easier and smoother.

You must be a Confluence administrator or space administrator to copy spaces. Also, you must have the Create space permission. Learn more about the Confluence permissions in Permissions and restrictions.

If you want to copy a personal space, you must either be its owner or have administrative permissions for it.

What will be copied from a space?

An existing space is always copied into a new space that Confluence creates automatically. The new space should have a name, a unique space key, and optionally, a description.

Not all the content and settings of your space will be duplicated in the new space. From the following table, you’ll find out what will be copied by default, what won’t be copied, and what’s optional to copy.

Known limitations

The following technical limitations were put in place to prevent errors and failures that may occur otherwise:

• You can copy only one space at a time. You should repeat the procedure for each space that you want to copy.

• You can copy spaces within only one Confluence instance. Copying spaces between different instances isn’t possible.

• A copy is created in one long-running operation. Check the progress bar to find out about the status of the operation.

• From one branch of pages in the original space tree, only 2000 pages can be copied at a time. If the branch contains more than 2000 pages, the rest of the pages won’t be copied and the copying will stop.

  • This limitation doesn’t apply to blog posts as well as to the case where no branch in the original space contains more than 2000 pages.

• Once space copying has started, you can’t cancel it. You should wait until the operation is completed to see the result.

• Other users shouldn’t make changes to a space that is being copied. Making changes to the content while a copy is in progress may cause the operation to fail.

• Only the latest version of a page and blog post is copied.

• Third-party apps, like Scaffolding Forms & Templates, aren't copied.

• The copy operation can be a few times slower if Confluence uses Amazon S3 storage to store attachments. We recommend using a filesystem (FS) storage if you want to run copies more quickly.

Copying a space

To copy the content and settings of an existing space:

1. Go to the space that you want to copy.
2. Select Space tools > Overview > Copy Space.
   
   
3. Select what you want to copy:

   1. Pages and blogs – both pages and blog posts will be copied to the new space.
      

      Page and blog copying is audited in your Confluence instance. If any other option is selected for copying (for example, comments or attachments), the additional parameters will show this to you in the audit.

   2. Pages only – only pages will be copied to the new space.

   3. Blogs only – only blog posts will be copied to the new space.

   4. Space settings only – the new space will be created with all the settings from the original space, like permissions, templates, look and feel, etc.

      1. The new space won’t have any pages, including a home page, or blog posts.

      2. You can also select to copy the original creator of the space, the original date when it was created, and the original space labels.

      3. If you don’t copy the original space creator and creation date, you’ll be set as a creator of the new space, and the current date when you’re copying the space will be set as the creation date of the new space.

4. If you’re copying pages, blog posts, or both, choose what other content you want to copy.
   

   Expand to learn more about the content options

   Content option	What you should know
   Include watchers	If you want to copy watchers, keep the checkbox selected. If not, clear the checkbox.
   Existing authors and dates	If selected, the option applies only to original authors and dates of pages and page attachments. Original authors and dates are always preserved in the new space for blog posts, comments, blog post attachments, and comment attachments. If you want to keep the original authors of pages and original dates of page creation and last update, keep the checkbox selected. If you don’t want to keep the original authors and dates, clear the checkbox. In this case: You’ll be set as the creator of the new space. In the new space, you’ll be assigned as the author of all pages and page attachments (if you choose to copy attachments). The current date when you’re copying the space will be set as the creation date for the new space, all pages in it, and all page attachments (if you choose to copy attachments).
   Comments	If you want to copy comments, keep the checkbox selected. All comments will be copied for pages or blog posts, depending on what you want to copy. The original authors and creation dates of all comments are always preserved on all pages and blog posts in the new space, regardless of whether the Existing authors and dates option has been selected. If you don’t want to copy comments, clear the checkbox.
   Attachments	If you want to copy attachments, keep the checkbox selected. Only page attachments are affected if you select Existing authors and dates: If you select the option, the attachments copied to the new space will keep the original users who uploaded them and the original dates of the uploads. If you don’t select the option, you’ll be set as a user who attached files to pages. The date when you’re copying the space will be set as a creation date for the attachments. For blog post and comment attachments, the new space will always display the original users who attached files and the original dates when files were attached, regardless of whether you select Existing authors and dates or not. If you don’t want to copy attachments, clear the checkbox. If you copy attachments but don’t copy comments, comment attachments will still be copied to the new space. You’ll find them in Attachments of a page or blog post.
   Labels	If you want to copy labels, keep the checkbox selected. If not, clear the checkbox.

5. In the Name of new space field, edit the name of the new space.
6. In the New space key field, edit the key of the new space.
7. In the Description field, enter the description of the new space.
8. Select Copy.

To track the progress and status of the copy operation, check the progress bar.

As the initiator of the copy, only you can monitor its progress.

When the copy operation is completed, the success message will display on the page. The message will contain a link to the new space.

If something goes wrong, check the reason and solution for the issue in Troubleshooting or reach out to Atlassian Support.

Performance tests

To find out how much time it takes for the copy operation to complete, check our performance test calculations.

In both tests, copying attachments took about 50% of the total time that the entire space took to copy. This means that if your space has more attachments, copying it might take longer.

The average time for copying one page is up to 1 second. We’re working on improving the performance in future versions.

Troubleshooting

Is there anything you can’t copy? Has the space copying failed? Look for answers and solutions here. If we haven’t listed your issue, reach out to Atlassian Support.