Error importing Word document "A page already exists with the title"

Question

Hi:

Hoping that someone has a solution or workaround.

We are trying to import a document and all the process goes correct if we import the file using on the option Split by heading "Level 4 headings" if we try to use Level 8 (which is the correct one and the one detected, we get an error.

This is the error:

Cause

com.atlassian.confluence.pages.DuplicateDataRuntimeException: A page already exists with the title Print Boarding Pass for customers having CBBG_EXST SSR in the space with key TCSS
    at com.atlassian.confluence.pages.DefaultPageManager.throwIfDuplicateAbstractPageTitle(DefaultPageManager.java:1627)

Stack Trace:[hide]

com.atlassian.confluence.pages.DuplicateDataRuntimeException: A page already exists with the title Print Boarding Pass for customers having CBBG_EXST SSR in the space with key TCSS

unknown · Answer

Once again Atlassian's poorly designed metadata structures come home to roost.  Yes Nic, I've read numerous of Atlassian (your) poor excuses about how allowing "duplicate" page names breaks searches (it doesn't) or using unique identifiers makes the page URL ugly for the user (a really poor excuse, there's no shortage of websites using this approach).

Your comment on a response in another thread,

"duplicates always break search because you can't get a definitive answer in one go. Sticking a random number on the end is just making the page non-unique by botching it and making it ugly for the user."

is mostly BS.  Apparently nobody at Atlassian has heard of hierarchies, and that web crawlers and search engines uses the meta in the hierarchies to facilitate the searches.   Such an example is available on the Asus website (www.asus.com) they have utilized the "duplicate" name /Tech-Specs/ for all their products.

Michael Nassette, who responded to the same question brought by the end user got it right,

"It seems the directory tree within a space is not being taken into consideration when trying to create pages with the same name within 1 space. I will look if there is an improvement request pending for this, and if there isn't, I will create one."

A design utilizing a proper b-tree hierarchy structure with unique leaf values would allow for independent pages with the same name.

A design utilizing a proper b-tree hierarchy structure with pointers to a common leaf value would allow for an identical page to be included with context specific information based upon the node in the hierarchy (such as what ASUS and WIKI does).

In my opinion, Atlassian botched the design, creating a situation that will take too much time and effort to unwind,, so were all stuck with this mistake.   As with other questions related to this design flaw, we are again told DO A WORKAROUND to fix our problem.

I could go on about this in more detail, but I'm not being paid by Atlassian to fix your design flaws.

At what point does Atlassian look at the number of issues end users raise and the problems it's causing the community before thinking, "maybe we should fix this" ?

This is not a customer service driven approach.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

This will happen in two similar cases.  The error message is correct in what it says - either there is a page with that name in the space before you begin the import, or you have two (or more) headers in the doc with the same name, so it's creating one and falling over when it reaches the duplicated name.

You have a couple of options - rename or delete the page that already exists, or edit the document before import, renaming the duplicated header.