Images and excerpts suddenly missing from PDF exports

[Nina Misson]

I’m running into two PDF export issues that only started happening recently.

1. PNG images no longer appear in PDF exports

Up until recently, our PDF exports worked perfectly. Now, PNG images simply don’t show up in the exported PDF.

The pages look correct in Confluence.

The PDF export completes successfully, but any PNG image is missing.

As a test, I replaced a PNG with a .jpg, and the JPEG exported fine — but we can’t switch formats across our documentation because we have hundreds of pages of content, all using PNGs.
So this used to work, but suddenly doesn’t.

2. Excerpts also fail to export

In a separate Space I created an inclusion library for screenshots (using Excerpt + Excerpt Include). This works great in the Confluence editor - the images display correctly - but none of the excerpts are included in the PDF export, even when the included image is a .jpg.

So, my questions are:

- Is this a known bug?

- Are there any workarounds that don't require converting our entire image library?

Thanks,

[Nina Misson · Accepted solution]

UPDATE: The issue was fixed: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-83289

[Steven Rhodes]

This is also affecting our instance. A simple one page PDF with two images. PNG images do not export. It also took 158 seconds to export one page.

Expecting people to pay out $10,000 a year (3000 users) for K15T PDF Exporting just to fix a broken feature is laughable, and I've seen multiple times people recommending this addon. The "doc" export isnt actually a doc export, its mht which is really old and not much better than raw text.

[marc -Collabello--Phase Locked-]

Hi @Steven Rhodes ,

Thanks for your thoughts.  However it is unfair to call out K15T for making a working product.  The problem is that Atlassian is breaking their own their PDF export.

[Steven Rhodes]

Im not calling out k15t, its that people recommend a $10K addon instead of calling out Atlassian for not providing competent export tooling. Page exports have not been their strength over the years and its still not good enough.

Great to see that the bug has been fixed fairly quickly this time

[marc -Collabello--Phase Locked-]

Indeed, many of our partners need PDF export for regulatory compliance and audits.

These broken PDF exports have led to considerable consternation in their organizations, and it is unbelievable how careless Atlassian has been handling this.  I do not consider a 2 week turnaround for such a critical bug acceptable.

You would expect that automated release testing catches such obvious bugs.

[Kris Klima _K15t_]

@Nina Misson 

It seems that you're not the first person with this issue - images do not appear in the exported PDF. I was chatting with another user last week.

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

(after a couple of steps you should be able to open a live chat, or you can just open a ticket)

My first question would be 

a) Are you running a custom CSS for PDF exports?

b) For excerpts... are permissions set up correctly? If a person cannot see the excerpted content on a page, then it should not be able to export it...)

[marc -Collabello--Phase Locked-]

Great answer by @Kris Klima _K15t_ 

[Nina Misson]

Hi Kris!

I tried the link you shared, and I was only able to get this far: 

To answer your questions:

a) I checked under Look and Feel → PDF Export → PDF Stylesheet, and the stylesheet is empty. So I can confirm we’re not using any custom CSS for PDF exports.

b) The excerpts display on the Confluence pages perfectly (all users can see them). But when I export the page to PDF, the excerpts are not included.

I tried exporting to Word, and the excerpts are included, but the resolution is so low that the image is barely recognizable.  

Since the same content appears in Word export but not in PDF export, I assume the issue is the PDF engine failing to render the excerpts rather than a permissions or macro issue.

This feels like a regression in the PDF export engine ... Was there a recent change that might cause this?

Thanks for your help so far!

[Kris Klima _K15t_]

@Nina Misson - this looks like a response for Confluence Free licenses.

My private site is Standard and I'm seeing this

I'm logged in with my Atlassian account so the system identefied me and offered me to choose the product affected.

Aaaaanyway....

I ran your issue by the resident AI and got this:

Current Limitations with PDF Export in Confluence Cloud

• Missing Excerpts and Attachments: When exporting a page to PDF, certain content such as excerpts and attachments (including images like PNGs) may not be rendered or included as expected. Attachments are often shown as a paperclip icon rather than being displayed inline or appended to the PDF. There is currently no workaround for this limitation 1.

• Image Issues: If images (such as PNGs) are not visible in the PDF export, it could be due to how the images were added or migrated. For example, images with a width set to "0" or below the minimum size requirement (16px) may not display. You can try editing the page, selecting the image, and resizing it to be above 16px, then republishing the page 2 3.

• Feature Requests and Bugs: Atlassian is aware of these issues, and there are open feature requests and bug reports. You can check out the relevant tickets and add yourself as a watcher to get notified of any updates or developments:

  • https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-41532

  • https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-82510

Would you like guidance on how to check or adjust image sizes on your pages, or do you want more details about the feature requests?

Sources

1. Include Attachments when exporting a page to PDF

2. Images are not visible on the page although they are listed in the storage format

3. Images in Confluence pages are broken after migration

[Nina Misson]

Update: I didn’t change any images, but yesterday afternoon the PDF export did suddenly work (no changes were made to the document), but then this morning it stopped working again. I changed all the images in a document from png to jpg. Then I did two exports – I got a “preview unavailable” box at the first export, and then I got blank spaces at the second export.

It appears to depend on when I try the export.

I will try to get my admin to file a support ticket. Does anyone know if missing images/excerpts from exports have already been escalated as a bug? The feature requests and bugs from the third bullet point are for attachments and databases.

Thanks, 

[marc -Collabello--Phase Locked-]

My recommendation is to contact Atlassian support directly.  There have been multiple regressions with PDF export, and the current state of the export system is difficult to infer.

[Nina Misson]

Yes, unfortunately, that's the case with PDF exports. It's quite a pain for my team since our customers still require PDFs from us. We may have to start using a different solution if it keeps regressing.

Do you know a way to contact Atlassian directly? From what I can tell, there's no way to contact support unless you are an admin.