Confluence Cloud “New Editor”: what’s actually changing (and how to survive it)

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If you’ve noticed legacy pages suddenly flipping to the new Cloud editor: you’re not imagining it. Atlassian is actively phasing out the legacy editor so Confluence Cloud runs on one single editing experience going forward.

Why it feels “sudden”

For years Confluence Cloud has lived in two worlds: older pages created in the legacy editor, and newer pages created in the Cloud editor. Atlassian is now closing that gap, which means legacy pages get converted to the new editor experience as part of the rollout.

What’s changing in practice

• You can’t really rely on “legacy pages staying legacy” anymore.

• Auto-conversion can happen as people view/edit certain pages.

• Over time, legacy editing and rollback options become less available until they’re gone.

The part that hurts: “looks fine in edit mode, breaks after publish”

This is the classic conversion pain: some pages look okay while editing, but once Confluence renders the saved page, the layout/formatting can break. It’s usually triggered by specific legacy constructs. Older layout sections, complex tables, nested macros, and other “creative” formatting that doesn’t translate 1:1 into the new editor.

Best practice approach (what actually works)

Confluence migrations are always a bit of an art. The goal isn’t “perfect conversion”, it’s “stable pages people can read and maintain”.

Here’s what tends to work best:

1) Don’t guess, Get visibility first
Identify where your legacy content lives and what pages are truly business-critical. Start with the pages people use daily.

2) Fix the critical stuff first
HR policies, onboarding, runbooks, IT help, SOPs, “how we work” pages those are the ones that hurt when formatting breaks.

3) Fix by pattern, not page-by-page heroics
Most breakages come from repeatable patterns (certain macro + certain layout + tables). Fix a few examples, document the pattern, then apply the same fix across similar pages.

4) When a page is “cursed”, rebuild the block
Sometimes the fastest fix is to recreate the broken section in the new editor instead of fighting legacy markup.

5) Treat it as governance, not a one-time event
Once you’re on the new editor, the long-term win is consistency: good templates, clear ownership, and a simple review cadence so content doesn’t rot.

Question for other admins

If you’ve been hit by conversion already: what breaks most for you? Tables, layouts/columns, include patterns, specific macros? Any repeatable fixes you’ve found?

If you haven’t been hit yet: are you proactively converting and cleaning up, or waiting until pages get converted as part of normal work?