Methods to monitor attachments

Question

Looking for any methods/recommendations on monitoring attachments.

My users love to upload the same attachment to different pages, instead of uploading it once and just linking to different pages. This causes a big problem for any documents that need to be controlled and maintained such as quality documents. So if a user needs a particular form, it may have been uploaded to 10 different pages, so if they search who knows if they are getting the most updated form.

Looking for ways to identify these duplicates and remove them. And then some process that if the attachment name already exists then it gives them a message that it is already within the Confluence instance. Possibly a plugin that would allow this or a query that I could write to at least gather a list. Any thing that can help!!!

Andy Folland · Answer

Right - as promised, I found a way to analyse the set of attachments for duplicates, but it was horribly labour intensive. So, for what it's worth, here's how I did it:

* Asked our IT folks to generate a list of all attachments into an XLS file for me. They had to do this via a database query. I have no idea how, nor the permissions anyway, so I sent this link:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/confkb/how-do-i-list-all-attachments-in-confluence-with-their-location-and-file-sizes-346325893.html
* In my case, the resulting XLS was not ideal as it contained image files + attachments on deleted pages. So I had to filter these out in Excel, and then use a conditional formatting rule to highlight duplicates.

For the record, I think the space attachments report should be able to filter out image files, and then be exportable as CSV or something. Surely this isn't asking too much - but is there even any point asking Atlassian for this?

Andy Folland · Answer

Hello Tim,

(Blimey - this is already an ancient post...)

I have exactly the same issue as you. I'm struggling to solve this at present - but if I make any progress, I will share with you.

BTW I also looked at the de-dupifier add-in mentioned by Ann (thank you Ann) - but this appears to only declutter multiple attachment versions on a specific page.

So far, my only solution is looking to be something like this:

* Generate a list of all attachments in Excel (not easy).
* Use Excel macros to sift for duplicates.

BUT step 1 here is already horrendous - as there is no useful export function.

AnnWorley · Answer

Hi Tim,

I don't know a way to eliminate duplicate attachments out of the box with Confluence. It may be worthwhile to try a free trial of Attachment De-Dupifier for Confluence. There are several other attachment related plugins on the Marketplace which could help as well but that one stood out as fitting your use case.

Thanks,
Ann