How to disable the default language setting in Confluence Datacenter
Platform Notice: Data Center - This article applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this knowledge base article was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center knowledge base articles for non-Data Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. 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
By disabling the default language setting, which allows users to choose the language that Confluence uses to display screen text and messages, users will not be allowed to use any other language except for the English language.
Environment
Confluence DataCenter 7.20.X and older versions
Solution
There are two ways to disable the default language setting:
1) Disable non-English language packs via Confluence Admin > Manage Add-ons (recommended):
- Navigate to General Configuration > Manage Add-ons
- Select All add-ons from the drop-down menu
- Find and disable other language packs (for example: Confluence German (Germany) Language Pack)
2) Remove the language packs from the bundled plugins archive:
Remove the files and place them in a backup folder, since you might need them in the future
- Shutdown Confluence
- Go to
<Confluence-install-directory>/Confluence/WEB-INF/atlassian-bundled-plugins/ - Remove the desired language packs (the language files start with "confluence-language-pack"). There are usually four such files by default. For example, in Confluence 5.6.4, these are the default language files:
- confluence-language-pack-de_DE-5.6.0-m7-v2r9462-2014-08-21.jar
- confluence-language-pack-es_ES-5.6.0-m7-v2r16510-2014-08-21.jar
- confluence-language-pack-fr_FR-5.6.0-m7-v2r4722-2014-08-21.jar
- confluence-language-pack-ja_JP-5.6.0-m7-v2r21802-2014-08-26.jar
- Start Confluence