Confluence cloud attachments not downloading

[Giulia Carnovale]

Confluence Cloud Attachments Not Downloaded by Third-Party Integration

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to determine whether a recent change in Confluence Cloud could be affecting how attachments/images are accessed by third-party tools.

We use MadCap Flare to import release notes from Confluence Cloud. The page content imports successfully, but all images fail to download. The import log reports errors similar to:

Unable to download resource: image-xxxxxx.png

The pages themselves are imported correctly, but no image files are downloaded. The target image folder remains completely empty.

Some additional details:

• Confluence Cloud

• Managed Atlassian account using SSO

• Authentication performed with an Atlassian API token

• Multiple users can reproduce the issue

• The same process worked previously

• The issue was observed recently after upgrading our documentation tool (MadCap Flare 2026)

At the moment I'm trying to understand whether:

• Confluence Cloud has recently changed how attachments/images are served or authenticated

• There are known limitations for API-token-based access to attachment downloads

• Other users have seen similar issues with third-party integrations that import Confluence content and attachments

Has anyone encountered something similar, or is there a recommended way to verify whether attachment download URLs are still accessible through API-token authentication?

Any insights would be appreciated.

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski · Accepted solution]

Hello @Giulia Carnovale 

Based on the answer from Atlassian, fix is on the way, and they provided a workaround for that.

More details here https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-84433 

Best,

Arek 🤠