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Cancel Edit of a Confluence Page

Reto Weiss

After starting to edit a Confluence page I realize that I want to discard this modification.
What shall do now?

The only option I see is pressing Close. However, by doing that, my changes are persisted nevertheless and, the next time I open this page, I get asked whether to resume or discard the edit.

This is not what I want, I want to discard now, not postponing this decision to any time later when I probably can't remember the context.

Are there any alternatives to Close, in such a case? Is there a button / keyboard shortcut for cancel/abort/discard?

Accepted answers

All comments

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

There's an assumption that you always want to keep any edits, so there's no "discard" in the page. You can bin changes though - use close as you do now, then go to your profile drop-down menu and click "drafts". Find the page you were editing and delete it. This bins the draft and the next time you go to edit the page, you'll get the current content to work with.

Reto Weiss

Thanks a lot for the confirmation.
The workaround you have mentioned is not really the "one key shortcut" I'm looking for, but it definitely works.

It's just - as an administrator, many times you open a page in edit mode to just "look inside", without the intention to actually change anything. To make sure this doesn't happen accidentally, a discard would still be a nice feature, IMHO.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

No, I'm afraid it's not ideal. I'd like a discard option too for what it's worth

Milo Test

I've added an improvement request that you are welcome to vote for: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-38764

Jan Pichler

You can publish the changes, and then revert to the previous version. Not the missing 1-click shortcut either, but a little faster than the profile workaround I guess?

Andre Vergison

Clicking on the Edit button strongly suggests that you are going to edit the content you just saw, not anything else (unless a prompt makes you choose etc.).

The assumption that you always want to keep any edits, so no "discard" would be needed, is just nonsense. You do not always want to keep edits!

Assume you edit a long page near the its end and mess it up there, intentional or not. You just close it. After your vacation go forgot about that but now you wish to edit it near the top. You think you did a good job and you publish it. Only so many days later someone else discovers what you messed up down the page!

In addition, and this is really freaking, the drafts are not private, they are public! So if I modify the said page messed up by my work mate, and then close it, then I'm sure convinced that the original page is being edited. But I introduced the mess near the page bottom, without being aware of it.

I understand that all of this is due to the new collaborative editing. Editing the same page in two tabs simultaneously works really great indeed. You can see text being added or removed by others. Love it.

So I understand that pressing the Edit button in fact means something like "Enter the draft which is now under collaborative editing" (or "Enter the club of page editors").

Hence the actual problem is that the switch from the static, last published, text to the new text-under-editing (new draft) is not always visible and can lead to big misunderstandings about what's actually on the page at the very moment of joining the editors club.

Trying to find a solution ... IMO Confluence needs to add at least a big warning popping up if there are differences between the last published page and the new in-edit state of the page just after pressing the Edit button. Then at least you know that something is going on.

If not, then "collaborative editing" may become "co-destructive editing".

Andre Vergison

I found and removed several such drafts. But I have at least one page which has a collaborative modified image which does not figure in the drafts listing. Where could I find it then?

Matthew Gately

This is a way, albeit time-consuming, but a way of canceling a draft that you just made and are sure you want to delete.

But when you look at the list of drafts in hindsight, there is not a way that I have found to see the diff to know if it was a draft that was purposely canceled or one that was autosaved before an accidental close.

Akros Informatik

It's really annoying that Atlassian forces us to keep all edits,
because the resulting workflow is a nightmare:

if we edit such a page again, then we will be asked what we would like to do.

Who can answer this question if the last edit was some days ago?

Compared to this annoying "atlassian workflow" it would be extremely easy and fast to decide if one would like to keep or to discard the current edits. We don't really have to think about it.

Some days later, the same question is ... annoying.

Andrea Benton

Seems like I'm reminded more and more of problems with Confluence. No Undo button, and Ctrl-Z / Cmd-Z doesn't always undo changes made, then as a result of that I'm in a situation with Unpublished changes, which I do not want to publish, because the Undo didn't work, and cannot cancel Unpublished Changes.

Confluence is becoming more and more user-unfriendly, particularly in a multi-user environment.

It's more than annoying - it's disastrous to lose a whole table because Undo doesn't work and there is no option but to publish that disastrous change to the page -> disastrous outcome -> ridiculous Confluence!

Why can't I discard Unpublished changes?

Why can't I have an Undo button?

Why can't the manual Undo options work?

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