Confluence broke version history

[Aaron Castor-Katz]

Confluence just rolled out a change that breaks page version history.  There used to be a perfectly good interface that allowed easy selection of version sand diff between versions.  Confluence has now replaced this with a sidebar that doesn't appear to have the diff functionality.

How do I get back to the old version history that actually worked as expected?

[Johan]

I agree with @Bill Sheboy and @Liz Wiggins

This is a game changer for us and not in a positive way. It makes it impossible to use Confluence for controlled documents like we do when we use Confluence as part of our QMS.

Please bring back the version number at least!

[Liz Wiggins]

Why why why? Why change something thats works really well? This has a big impact to our business as we are always iterating.

This is a game changer for us and not in a positive way. The hours this is now going to take to review each version on seperate browers is insane.

Can you at least give options for people to choose which version they would prefer and then maybe make sure your change actually works before you roll it out. 

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Aaron Castor-Katz 

Based on the release blog, that change was just released this week: 

https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/blog/2026/02/atlassian-cloud-changes-feb-16-to-feb-23-2026

When you have feedback on such changes, please use the built-in mechanism under ? - Help, Give Feedback at the top-right of the page.

When you observe a defect with the change, please work with your Product Admin to submit a ticket to Atlassian Support here:

https://support.atlassian.com/contact/#/

Kind regards,
Bill

[David Michelson]

Hi everyone,

David from the Confluence Cloud product team here. Thank you so much for your feedback.

I wanted to clarify that you should still be able to view the detailed diffs between versions (with the green and red highlights) just like before in the version viewer to the left of the Rovo summary panel. Please ensure that "Highlight changes" is toggled on in the bottom right corner. The summary is an added aid, not a replacement for highlighted chagnes.

In the new experience, the view of the actual version / version comparison content takes up less screen real estate in the old experience (also, it renders in the accurate editor now!). So, it's much more likely that any highlighted changes may be "below the fold" and require scrolling to find them, making it appear as if no changes are highlighted. To address this, we are working on adding the ability to easily hop to changes in the document, making them easier to find.

Please do let us know if you are not seeing diffs between version that have differences between them!

Thank you,

David

[Johan]

Hi @David Michelson 

For our case, it's not the diff that is the main issue, but the fact that the document version number is not visible anywhere (except if I copy-paste the URL for each version...). We need the document version number for traceability.

But for the diff, can you please explain how it's intended to work? When I select the latest version it shows red/green text, but towards which version it that compared? (And what are "offline edits")?

BR,

Johan

[David Michelson]

@Johan 

When you select a single version with "Highlight changes" on, it will show diffs between that version and the previous version. This is similar to Google Docs' version history functionality.

If you decide to compare two specific versions, the changes will show the diffs between those two versions.

Offline edits are edits that Confluence was still able to save, even if they were made when the network was unavailable.

Thanks,

David

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @Aaron Castor-Katz 

I totaly agree.

Best is to provide feedback to Atlassian via the feedback option in the help menu.

This is our only option to react to this.

[Aaron Castor-Katz]

The new version history doesn't appear to highlight changes in green/red anymore

The new version history wastes space on the right side of the window that cannot be closed / minimized while looking at what changes were made