How can I delete an old version of a page?

[Sharon Gilmore]

I have a page which has had 2 versions; the original version is causing some issues with a macro, so I wanted to just delete it.  When I go to the page history, I can see a Delete button next to version 1, but when I click it, the old version doesn't get deleted - the page refreshes, but both versions are still there.  No error messages on the screen, and nothing in the console.

 Is there some extra permission I need?  Or could something be blocking it from deleting?

[Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_ · Accepted solution]

If you see the Button, you should be able to delete it. I had no issues with that function whatsoever. Have you tried to delete an old version of a page that doesn't have issues with a macro?

Maybe whatever is causing trouble with the macro is also preventing the page from being deleted?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

I suspect the macro that is broken is also breaking the "delete version" function.  Confluence runs a lot of the code that renders a page when you try to delete a page (I don't think Cloud and server are very different there), so if it can't render a macro, there's a good chance it can't get through "delete" as well as "view".

Definitely one for Atlassian support, if you want a proper fix, but there are three other options.

• Export the page (and its child pages, just in case), then immediately import them
• Same again, but delete the whole page (and children), and empty the space trash before running the import.  Worst case is that the import cannot import the broken revision, so it is effectively deleted.
• Brute force a bit of data loss - copy the page to an importable not-Confluence system (a word processor or even text editor if you're happy to do all the work to re-create the clever bits), delete it entirely, then create it again, copy and pasting the content back from your temporary copy in the other system.