How to bulk delete pages in Confluence Cloud

[#1]

Option 1: Use Confluence's content manager

Best for: Smaller cleanup jobs local to just a few spaces

Confluence Cloud has a built-in tool called content manager, designed to make page management easier. Here's how to get started:

1. In your chosen Confluence space, click Content manager in the sidebar.

2. Select your pages.

3. Click Delete at the bottom of the page.

4. Confirm by clicking Delete in the pop-up dialog box.

⚠️Help! The content manager link is missing!

If you can't see the link to the content manager, that can mean one of two things:

• You're not on a Premium/Enterprise plan or

• You don't have admin permissions in your current Confluence space.

You can check which it is by heading to your personal space to see if the content manager is visible in the sidebar. Here's how it should look:

If the content manager is accessible in your personal space, contact an admin to ask for permissions in your chosen space.

Pros and cons of content manager

Pros:

• Confluence's content manager is quick and straightforward to use.

• As it's built into Confluence Cloud, you don't need additional tools.

Cons:

• The content manager isn't available to everyone; you must have a Confluence Premium or Enterprise plan and permissions for that space.

• There are some limitations on what you can delete, which might make larger cleanup jobs more tedious and repetitive:

  • You can only delete a maximum of 100 pages at a time.

  • It's not possible to delete pages from multiple spaces at once.

If you have a lot of content to delete across your Confluence site, going into every space will take precious time and energy. You might want to try a more practical, time-saving solution:

Option 2: Use a dedicated content management app

Best for: More comprehensive cleanup jobs that span many spaces

With the help of an app from the Atlassian Marketplace, you can bulk delete pages faster than ever.

Our guide uses Panorama for Confluence, which is designed to make content management easier than ever. Panorama lets you delete up to 200 pages simultaneously – double the content manager limit – and pages from multiple spaces in one go.

Follow along with the steps below, or click here for an interactive demo.

1. Install Panorama for Confluence

2. In Confluence, click Apps > Panorama. This will take you to Panorama's control centre.
   
   

3. Under Spaces, type add your chosen space(s) to the dashboard.

4. Select up to 200 pages. If you've added more than one space to the dashboard, these pages can be across multiple spaces.

5. Click Delete at the top of the page, review your selected pages, and click Apply

 Finally, select Apply on the pop-up to confirm deletion.

What are your top tips for keeping your Confluence instance tidy? Share your thoughts in the comments below 👇

[Kristian Klima]

A couple of months ago, I was answering a question here in which a user was asking how to perform multiple bulk operations.... 

It was possible.

But only with three different tools!

As a user whose job is content management and life-cycle management of the said content, I was a bit dismayed by the fact that while there were three very similar tools available (Content Manager, Panorama, and Pages Manager (Ricksoft), each of them has a different set of features.

There are overlaps, of course. But each tool was missing what felt like an obvious feature. Now, I don't want Atlassian to 'sherlock' app vendors. Having said that, bulk operations are not that of an advanced feature that would require stitching together a workflow out of three apps.

Disclaimer... all apps are great and I'm using them. In different scenarios. Along a Confluence Database where the apps won't do :D 

[Mathew Lederman]

There are two helpful branches in the global Confluence automation that actively support cleanup activities:

•  For Inactive Pages
• For pages owned by a deactivated account

Utilize these two find your inactive/unsupported pages and work with your space admins to archive unused pages/spaces.

For archiving a large amount of pages, use the Archive Pages method in the Confluence API: https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/confluence/rest/v1/api-group-content/#api-wiki-rest-api-content-archive-post