Summary

Upon trying to publish a draft, the following error message is displayed:

There was an error processing the request.

Diagnosis

• Confirm that the page has never been published, keeping it only as a draft.

• From the browser's console (right-click > Inspect > Network > Response), the following error is displayed:

  {"statusCode":400,"data":{"authorized":false,"valid":true,"errors":[],"successful":false},"message":"com.atlassian.confluence.api.service.exceptions.BadRequestException: Could not publish draft. Parent page has not been published."} 

• When looking at the breadcrumbs of the draft at the top-right of the page, click on what is supposed to be the parent page and confirm that this is in a draft state. If the page is not displayed, this could mean that this got restricted.

Cause

By default, Confluence does not allow pages to be published without having a parent. In these specific scenarios, some issue happens in which the page itself gets associated with a page that became a draft.

Solution

While editing the draft, move it to a different location:

1. New editor:
   1. Tap the ellipsis button at the top-right of the draft.
   2. Select Move and move it to a valid location.
2. Legacy editor:
   1. Near the breadcrumbs, tap the Set location button:
      
   2. Select a new location.
3. Publish the draft.

 Alternatively:

• If the parent page's draft can be located in the breadcrumbs, publish the parent page.
• Contact Atlassian Support to manually set the parent page as a published one via the backend. This is a restricted function for Atlassian in Cloud environments.