A draft is a 'snapshot' of unsaved page content, which Confluence creates automatically at regular intervals while you're creating or editing a page or blog post. Drafts can minimise the loss of work if your Confluence site experiences a problem, as you can retrieve the page content from the last saved draft.

By default, Confluence saves a draft of your page once every thirty seconds, however, a Confluence administrator can configure how often drafts are saved. In addition, whenever you edit a page and then move to another screen, Confluence will automatically save a draft. Each new draft replaces the previously saved draft.

Each time Confluence saves a draft, it displays a message and the time of the last save, to the right of the undo and redo buttons in the editor toolbar. When you edit a page that wasn't successfully saved, Confluence will let you know that a version of the page you're editing wasn't saved, and will give you the option to resume editing it from the draft.

 Screenshot: Message displaying the time when the draft was last saved

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More about drafts:

  • You only have access to drafts of pages you've been working on, and whose content hasn't yet been saved.
  • You can't create a draft explicitly.
  • Your drafts are listed in the 'Drafts' tab of your profile.
  • Once you've resumed editing a draft, or chosen to discard it, the draft is removed from your drafts tab.

Viewing drafts

Your drafts are listed on the Drafts tab of your user profile. To see your drafts, choose your profile picture at top right of the screen, then choose Drafts.

 

Resume editing a draft

There are two ways to resume editing an unsaved page or blog post:

  1. Using your drafts view. To resume editing a draft from this view:
    1. Choose your profile picture at top right of the screen, then choose Drafts.
    2. Choose Resume Editing next to the appropriate draft to resume editing that draft.
      (info) If you hadn't entered a page title, the draft will be named 'Untitled'.
  2. If you create a new page or blog post and didn't save it, but a draft is saved, when you next add a page or blog post in that space, Confluence will ask you if you want to resume editing the page. If you choose resume editing, the draft and its unsaved content will be restored, allowing you to continue editing it.

What happens if I'm editing the draft of a page that has since been updated?

Confluence will display a message informing you that you're editing an outdated page. If there are no conflicts between the two versions, Confluence will give you the option to Merge and Resume editing. 

If there are conflicts, Confluence will give you the option to View the Conflict or to Discard your changes.

Viewing your unsaved changes

When you edit a page or blog post, you can view any 'unsaved' changes you've made since the last automatically saved draft, by clicking the Draft autosaved at message in the toolbar.

Screenshot: Segment of the unpublished changes window

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