Issues with view/preview of attached MS Office documents

Question

We have just started using Jira Confluence in our company and have met problems with viewing and/or previewing any kind of MS Office documents attached to a page.

We are using Confluence version 7.01 on our own server installation on a MySQL database.

We have been searching forums and previously made support threads on the subject without being able to work out a solution - just to let you know, we did check and activate all appropiate macros (at least all is active).

When we press Preview button we just get a small screen blink and nothting else happens.

When we pres View button we get: Error formatting macro: viewfile: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com.atlassian.plugins.conversion.AsposeAware

Hope someone here can help :)

/Kenneth

Kenneth Damgaard Løwe · Answer

Hi Diego,

Thank you for replying, se my answers below 😊

We did infact test in multiple browsers and also cleared the cahce, restarted browsers and so – problem persist.
The problem is affect all users in Confluence.
We tried with many filetypes, i.e. .DOC, DOCX, .PDF. XLS, XLSX, PPT and so on… - we even tried with .TXT files and still no preview is possible.
We tried clearing the confluence plugin cache, unfortunately without luck.
Most of our team uses Google Chrome as our primary browser, personally this was also the browser I used when the issue first occurred.
Our Confluence Server is installed on a virtual server with CentOS 7 on a Java - pls. see details below:

Java Runtime Environment

Operating System

Linux 3.10.0-957.el7.x86_64

OS Architecture

amd64

Application Server

Apache Tomcat/9.0.22

Servlet Version

4.0

Java Version

1.8.0_202

Java Vendor

AdoptOpenJdk

JVM Version

1.8

JVM Vendor

Oracle Corporation

JVM Implementation Version

25.202-b08

Java Runtime

OpenJDK Runtime Environment

Java VM

OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM

Hope the above answer will help you helping us.

Best regards,

Kenneth D. Løwe

Itpilot ApS

Diego_88dj6o · Answer

Hey @Kenneth Damgaard Løwe , thanks for reaching to the community! For what I can see, you have been looking for a solution for some time now.

I believe we could start by ruling out a few items, what do you think? Here is a concise list of things for us to check:

* Try replicating the issue with multiple browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Microsoft Edge)
* Try clearing the browser’s cache and then replicate the behavior.
* Check if this is affecting multiple users
* Check if this affects multiple attachments
* Check which types of attachments are affected

After those checks, we can move into a more application-focused procedure. Try clearing the plugin cache:

* [Confluence Server] [How to clear Confluence plugins cache]

Please, keep in mind that clearing the plugin cache requires downtime. Some downtime needs to be scheduled for your instance so you can execute the procedure.

Also, check if this affects old attachments only or if this affects the newly added ones as well.

If possible, we would like to know a little more about your instance. Here is a list of questions:

* Which browser were you using when this issue came to light?
* Which version of Java are you currently running?
* What operating system are you running as host for your Confluence application?

Let us hear from you, Kenneth! Looking forward to your reply.