The Legacy Editor is being deprecated in Confluence Cloud: Here’s what you need to know

[Ole Nymoen]

It's good that pages with nested macros won't fail after being moved to Confluence.cloud. And it's not a fundamental problem that the legacy editor in Confluence.cloud dies.

But, as a user and administrator of both Datacenter and Cloud sites, Confluence.cloud is still painful, the editor included. It's also painful that new features like whiteboards and databases isn't available on Datacenter.

I have also moved a space from Datacenter to Cloud to test the experience, about 4 months ago. Lots of pages had to be edited as nested macros made rendering challenging. Very good that this is solved.
But I had to edit the pages in Confluence.datacenter before exporting/converting the space in the moving process. Editing hundreds of pages in the new editor was just too painful. 

The design criteria of the new editor is clearly much more geared towards new/inexperienced users as to being an efficient and snappy editor.

Maybe the new editor could get a less WYSIWYG mode that focuses of efficiency for experienced users?

[Kristof Thomys]

Feedback on the new editor. Tables are unusable for compact work.

The new Confluence editor has made table-based content almost unusable for technical or organizational workflows.

Table cells are too large, the line height is fixed, the padding cannot be adjusted, and there is no way to choose a compact layout as there was in the legacy editor.

In longer tables, it is no longer possible to see an overview at a glance. Even with the narrow layout and “Normal text” formatting, tables remain oversized. Important content that used to fit on a single screen now requires constant scrolling. This causes unnecessary friction in many teams.

My request is simple. Please bring back an option for compact table layout. This could be a formatting preset, a macro, or simply a smaller font with tighter spacing.

Thank you.

[Martina Guth]

Hi @Elle Ky , 

one question concerning the legacy templates. Currently I only have the option to create a new template and if I am lucky, I can copy and paste some things from the old to the new template. There are quite a lot of old templates in use in our company. Will we get the opportunity to switch from old to new like on pages even for templates? Otherwise it is really a mess to create all of them new.

Kind regards,

Martina

[Kent Chiu]

Hi @Elle Ky ,

How can we determine whether the Confluence Cloud template is still in the legacy editor or the new editor? I just checked our global templates, and no indicators are showing if it is still in the legacy editor.

Thank you,
--Kent

[John Medalen]

"Eligible legacy pages will be automatically converted ..."
So, which pages are not eligible?

[Kevin Robinson]

I have several issues with the legacy editor to Cloud editor conversion.

1. Note Panels have been converted to Info Panels.
2. Warning Panels have been converted to Error Panels.
3. Note Panels, Info Panels and Warning Panels have been converted as Header 1 which affects the Page Index.
4. Images have an error message: "This macro was added to a page that was converted from the legacy editor. It can’t be edited because it is now incompatible with the current editor".
5. Some images need to be manually converted to pixels.

These are issues that should have been address before my documents were converted the the cloud editor.  I have several hundred documents that are affected.

[Elle Ky]

Hi @Martina Guth!

 Will we get the opportunity to switch from old to new like on pages even for templates?

Yes, you can convert eligible legacy templates today. To convert a legacy template:

1. Open the sidebar in Confluence Cloud.

2. Select More (•••), then Templates.

3. Select Manage Templates (button near the top right corner)

4. Under User created templates, you will see the option to Convert for eligible legacy templates

Where needed, we’ll use the legacy content macro to help ensure your content is preserved and converted as smoothly as possible. This macro wraps any content that isn’t natively supported in the new editor, so you can continue working with your templates without losing important information.

We’re actively working to make this transition even more seamless and our goal is to minimize manual effort and disruption on your part, allowing you to continue to use your templates (in their converted form).

[Elle Ky]

Hi @Kent Chiu! 

How can we determine whether the Confluence Cloud template is still in the legacy editor or the new editor? I just checked our global templates, and no indicators are showing if it is still in the legacy editor.

Currently, the best way to determine this is by looking for the option to Convert the template. However, one caveat is that this only appears for legacy templates that are eligible for conversion. As we're continuing to add support for more use cases, not all templates or pages are eligible for conversion yet. If the template contains unsupported content that we're not able to convert yet, this Convert option will not appear yet. 

We understand this is not the most intuitive or complete information you are seeking. We are actively exploring better ways to provide this information to admins. As there are several top-of-mind questions related to legacy templates, we'll plan to share an update in the Legacy Editor Deprecation Community as we make more progress. 

1. Open the sidebar in Confluence Cloud.

2. Select More (•••), then Templates.

3. Select Manage Templates (button near the top right corner)

4. Under User created templates, you will see the option to Convert for eligible legacy templates

[Martina Guth]

Hi @Elle Ky what happens to the legacy content macro later on? Will that stay forever or will then there be a phase, where you say, this is deprecated, please rework your content. As you now say, that a lot of macros will be deprecated. 

I am currently thinking it is better to tell my users to rework their pages now, instead of rework now a little, and 6 month later - now rework further more. 

We migrated to cloud last year in June and in fact it was hard work for our users to keep their content living because of big disruptions between server and cloud. A lot of links were broken, macros didn´t work. Now the next wave comes and I want to prevent them from a third wave.

I fully agree on the cloud is cool and moving forward. I appreciate a lot of functionalities the cloud has. However what I need to critize is the way Atlassian is doing big changes without having a full scope of the impact on the users and a full hand of help for the admins.

In our company we build combisteamers for professional kitchens. All of our sales guys have been chefs before to know about the topics our customers have. All of our office staff has to do an apprenticeship day in our production, to see how our units are built. Maybe it would be good, if Atlassian colleagues would make an apprenticeship at your customers to see, how your products are used, what they are used for and what impact it has, if you change such huge things and what your customers need to support their teams.
Greetings,
Martina

[Kent Chiu]

Hi @Elle Ky ,

Thank you for providing the additional information to identify the legacy editor for templates.

I followed your instructions, but there are no listings in the "User-created templates.  I know that we have a lot of templates created by the users.

When I go to Manage Global Templates, all the templates created by users are listed.

Please advise.

Thanks,

Kent

[Martina Guth]

@Elle Ky 
When I convert pages to the new editor, no matter if I do that page by page or ticking the box for the whole space, images tend to be shown really big and I have no option to bring them back to their original size. The background colour changes as well. This is not my personal view of a convertable page and for sure not the one of our users. Information is key- I fully agree. But if the information is not looking nice, no one takes care of the information. What is the plan here?

Kind regards,
Martina

[Keith Furnell]

Just collating a list of unwanted changes that we have variously seen, or have been reported by others, upon legacy editor page conversion (for at least some pages):

• changes in image size/alignment
• tables becoming less compact
• header rows or columns getting un-bolded
• tables becoming full page width
• table column widths being lost
• empty table cells have newlines added, leading to unnecessary vertical stretching
• empty levels of bullet lists being added
• whitespace added between some paragraphs (e.g. newlines between tables are sometimes duplicated)
• whitespace added between multiple images in a row
• loss of colour-coding with monospaced text
• loss of superscript styling of monospaced text
• Note panels getting converted to Info panels.
• Warning panels getting converted to Error panels.
• Note/Info/Warning panels being given Header 1 styling, causing them to be added to the Table of Contents

These are all things we unfortunately need to look out for, with the aim of fixing whilst the intended presentation is still fresh in mind, when manually converting pages (which we won't be able to do if they are automatically converted).

[Martina Guth]

Hi @Keith Furnell
In fact I would like to tell my users: Please check all of your pages now to be sure, that every content AND presentation is working fine in the new editor. However if you have so many topics without a solution currently, what can we say to our users?
I am a friend of responsibility. The users, writing content, users reading content, are responsible for keeping it up to date and supporting each other. But we need the structures for that. And so many open topics are hard to sell.

Is there any timeline by when these bugs are fixed?

[HAEGELIN Sacha]

Hello @Keith Furnell  & @Elle Ky ,

Is there a chance you can provide us the list of feature/bugs we can vote and watch corresponding to the issues you listed? Is there a query based on filter or label we can use to trach the progress? [Confluence Cloud - Open Issues] Issue Navigator - Create and track feature requests for Atlassian products.

Should we raise to support tickets for those or is it not worth?
Do you have at least a rough idea when this would be fixed? Atlassian launched the clock and make us presession with deadline for converting to the new editor, but thus is meaning we need at least responsiveness in counter part!

[Keith Furnell]

Sorry @Martina Guth and @HAEGELIN Sacha I can't help with your questions as I'm not associated with Atlassian, I've just seen lots of individual "cosmetic" page conversion issues reported in various places including this thread and so thought I'd share the list we've collated. Hopefully @Elle Ky can provide more insight.

[Martina Guth]

Hi @Keith Furnell

Thank you very much for your support which tends to be the work of Atlassian. Making clear, what works and what not.
Kind regards,
Martina
@Elle Ky is there any chance to get answers for everyone sitting in the dark?

[s_weber]

Hi @Elle Ky 

After conducting an in-depth analysis, we are deeply concerned by the current findings:

• Out of 110,000 pages, 85,000 are affected.
• 55,000 pages will be auto-converted, but the quality is unacceptable (see the extensive defect list from @Keith Furnell  above).
• A significant portion of these 55,000 pages will still require manual intervention.
• 30,000 pages will need to be manually converted entirely.
   

Confluence is intended to support our users — not overwhelm them. The current approach risks undermining both the platform’s reputation and the credibility of our team.

We urgently need:

• A reliable method within the product to identify affected pages (e.g. via the content manager).
• Substantial improvements to the auto-conversion process. Blindly converting 55,000 pages without quality assurance is not acceptable.
   

We are prepared to escalate this through all available channels. It’s clear we are not the only organization facing these challenges, and the lack of progress is alarming.

This situation jeopardizes the acceptance, usage, and trust in Confluence across our company. I cannot imagine this outcome aligns with Atlassian’s strategic goals.

Please reach out to us immediately. The current approach and quality levels are not acceptable.

Best regards,

Sascha Weber

[Kent Chiu]

For those who want to know how to obtain a list of legacy editor pages and perform automatic bulk conversion, there are limited options available:

1. To generate a list, you can install a free plugin called "Keep it up to date!" This plugin includes an option to list pages using the legacy editor. However, the list is limited to 10,000 pages.
2. For bulk conversion, there is no fully automatic process, but you can enable a setting in the space configuration to force pages to convert to the new editor when edited. If a page cannot be converted for any reason, it will be displayed as is. Users must then edit and fix the page formatting and any legacy editor macro features not supported in the new editor.

Admin -> General Configuration

Hope this helps.

[marc -Collabello--Phase Locked-]

Be careful with the "Convert pages automatically" setting.  These pages get a new version, as the content has changed.

If you version control you Confluence pages for e.g. regulatory purposes you should be aware of this.

[Brendhan Melanson]

Seriously...who thinks this is a good idea? Does anyone at Atlassian actually read the comments or use their software?

If you're going to force us to use the newer version of your editor, you would think normally the newer version should be superior to the older one correct?

FALSE.

It's inferior in every way compared to the Legacy Editor. The day you force us to use the Cloud Editor is the day we find a intranet new service.

These are just a few gripes that you have still yet to address:

• Proper Nested Table Support
  • While "supported", the feature is only partial and still not fully rolled out. Even then, the nested table behavior is incredibly finnicky and difficult to format.
  • It was so much more intuitive in Legacy Editor. I shouldn't have to waste 5 minutes trying to resize a table within a table correctly just because you goofed up the transition between Legacy to Cloud and made the formatting options more obtuse.

• NO NESTED MACRO SUPPORT??????
  • The ability to use Macros within each other is vital to a clear document. Legacy Editor could nest them without issue, even 3rd party ones. Cloud Editor? Can't do bunk all.
  • How do you think this is acceptable with the amount of Macros produced (both company and user created) and utilized by users regularly?
• Counter-Intuitive Image Editor
  • In Legacy Editor, all Image manipulations no matter how primitive, could be performed from a basic and easy to use tool-tip bar with single click actions.
  • Now with Cloud Editor, I have to navigate through multiple pop-ups/windows/side bars just to resize an image? Some times less is more.
• The "Sections" editing and UI is inferior and unclear
  • In Legacy Editor, formatting "Page Sections" was done though simple single-click buttons and more importantly, I could clearly see which Sections I am formatting through the dotted line contour and how the layout will look at publication.
  • This dotted line contour was removed for Cloud, so now I can't see well which Section I'm formatting or how I'm editing it, or how the final layout looks until it's published/previewed.
  • Not to mention the Tooltip format options not appearing gracefully when hovering.
• Gutted Macro Inventory
  • The amount of different Macros that could be used for Legacy was a godsend. Anything you could think of someone managed to make a Macro for.
  • Now for Cloud? Good luck finding anything worthy of installation.
    • Legacy macros were created to enhance the Legacy Editor for EXTRA formatting options.
    • Cloud Macros are created to compensate for Cloud's basic feature removals that should not have been removed to begin with.

If anyone on the Development team bothered to actually read user feedback about the Cloud Editor, they would see how they have so much more work left to implement before they can even begin to THINK about a forced conversion.

People can sing your praises all they want about the Communication plan. It does nothing to justify the actual state of which the Cloud Editor currently is in before you deploy this undesired forced conversion.

For the record, I've been using Confluence for well over 10 years now and have been a happy/loyal user for almost everything previously deployed.

Until now.

This is just disappointing on all levels.

[John Medalen]

I agree completely.  I've invested so much time in Confluence for our documentation.

And it just seems unlike Atlassian to do a partial implementation on something that was working well.

[Guy Helmer]

Is there an easy way to copy and paste a row in a table in the new editor? I use this feature all the time in tables in legacy pages and have been avoiding updating pages because I can't find an easy equivalent.

[Danja Karenko]

@Guy Helmer , I'm not sure I'd call it "easy", but you can

- place your cursor anywhere in the table
- select a row by clicking the little grey "handle" on the lefthand side
- copy with Ctrl+c (Windows)
- place your cursor elsewhere in the table and paste the copied cells using Ctrl+v.
Note 1: If you're not replacing an existing row, this may require inserting a new blank row first.
Note 2: If you paste the copied row into the rightmost cell of an existing row, the table columns will be expanded by the amount of copied cells -1.



I no longer recall how this worked in the Legacy editor -- was there a faster way?

[Guy Helmer]

Thanks @Danja Karenko I didn't notice I could use that handle to select a row for copying. Still requires more clicks to insert an empty row and then paste.

In the old table editor, there were "copy / cut / paste" buttons for rows and columns that would appear when the cursor was in a table. It seemed very handy - especially to quickly copy a row and paste several copies that would be inserted.

[Alex Holtz]

The look and feel of pages created in the "new" editor are really poor. Will be migrating to markdown in github for documentation if the legacy editor is taken away without major improvements to the "new" editor.