Unable to Delete Attachments from Confluence
Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs 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
Symptoms
Deleting attachments fail with the following error in the browser:
1You are not permitted to perform this operationOR below in Confluence 2.10 or earlier:
1 2 3You cannot view this page due to inherited restrictions. Page level restrictions have been applied to a parent of the current page. These restrictions limit access to only certain certain user(s) or group(s) and apply to all pages in the hierarchy underneath the parent.The following also appears in the
atlassian-confluence.log:1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8Cause java.lang.NullPointerException at com.atlassian.confluence.pages.actions.MoveAttachmentAction.bootstrap(MoveAttachmentAction.java:120) Stack Trace:[hide] java.lang.NullPointerException at com.atlassian.confluence.pages.actions.MoveAttachmentAction.bootstrap(MoveAttachmentAction.java:120) at com.atlassian.confluence.pages.actions.PageAwareInterceptor.intercept(PageAwareInterceptor.java:98)
Cause
The issue occurs when the URI encoding hasn't been configured to UTF-8.
There have been isolated reports of this issue occurring on select attachments which are not using any special characters in their file name and the application URI encoding has been set to UTF-8. Please see the alternative causes article under the resolution section.
Resolution
Set the URI Encoding to UTF-8 as per Application Server URL encoding then delete the unwanted attachment afterward.
Upgrade to Confluence 3.1. or later, as described in CONF-13671.
See also You Cannot View This Page Due to Inherited Restrictions for alternative causes.
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