Change to your content is in your hands

[SilvioZ]

"Furthermore, there’s an option to revert back at any time" - What does this mean - can i convert a page back from "new editor" to "old editor"? I do not find that option.

We really missing for legacy reasons the page history comment.

[Terence Kent]

I'm glad to hear the old editor will be sticking around... but will you actually be maintaining it or just not removing it? There's a big difference.

Just in February, I worked with support on the long-standing (and time-consuming) anchor tag bug and was told...

...there aren't any available workarounds, other than to use the new editor - where the issue isn't happening

Worse, I was linked to the issue which states:

Since this problem doesn't affect the new editor, the long term solution would be to re-create the page using the new editing experience, which will be replacing the legacy editor on all cloud instances soon.

It sure seems like the old editor is just going to accumulate bugs until it's unusable and we'll all be forced switch the new editor - which currently has no rational upgrade path for existing content.

@Tiffany - At the end of the day, saying...

...we will not be adding features or fixing bugs on the Legacy editor unless we incur an incident....

and this....

...we stand by our value don’t #@!% the customer and will put you all first.

in the same post doesn't work. You can't have it both ways. There are a lot of bugs in the legacy editor that are labor intensive and time-consuming for the customer to work around. And, the new editor is clearly years away from being a viable replacement. So not working on the bugs in the legacy editor and instead only working on the "more fun" new editor is definitely #@!%ing the customer.

[Rominiek Schoonen]

Just add the pannel functionality back and all is good with the new editor.

[Peter Kidson]

Confluence editor Team:

OK, so you dumbed down the new editor in order to accommodate mobile devices.  Fine.

But why then put the more professional legacy editor on notice at all ?   Why not permanently have and continue to develop both ?  Probably like many other long-time users, very close to 100% of our site is exclusively based on the legacy editor's tables.  So just leave it to users decide which one to use for a given page.

[Jon Innes]

This is making me feel better, as I've helped two companies adopt Confluence and the level of frustration is high. I just lost much of a day working a a page that got into a state where it could not be modified. Some tables, some sections, some images. Nothing that should cause the dreaded red "page cannot be viewed" error or the inability to select page text to edit...this is supposed to be a mature product.

FYI I hope you are looking at the stats on how many of the pages are being edited on mobile and asking if that's worth the pain you are inflicting on customers creating/maintaining knowledge bases and requirements docs, and chose Confluence and Jira. They can join another club and write stuff there without these issues...

[Eoghan Murphy]

Hi @Tiffany I'm with @SilvioZ in asking where the option to revert back is. Pages that were created using the new editor, when it wasn't obvious that there was an option to keep on legacy, are now not able to utilise the option to comment on what was changed.

It really should be unacceptable to release a "new and improved" editor that is really "new and some improvements but lots of disimprovements and some useful functionality completely removed"

Looking at the history of feedback on the new editor experience it's obvious that this issue was highlighted early but

We removed this feature because it had almost no usage, but added significant visual clutter and complexity to Confluence

I don't think anyone that used it would agree with the visual clutter comment, and the complexity argument just sounds like it was put in the too hard basket, if only we could all get away with that.

When deciding that a feature has almost no usage, what percentage is that? What percentage of pages with multiple versions? What percentage of pages in Enterprise Customer sites? What percentage of pages in Customer sites with audit/compliance requirements?

As someone who used it, but not always, I didn't see a survey reaching out asking

"We see you are using this feature from time to time, what would you think if it was suddenly unavailable?"

The default for any new and improved functionality has to be that the old, tried and tested functionality is still available... or if not on the new option, then it has to be opt in to switch and a clear indication of features that will be lost by switching. Give the removed/reduced functionality as much prominence as the shiny new functionality.

[David Allyn]

+1 on comment from @Eoghan Murphy 

It's now been about 2 years since I initially raised concerns, and I'd say that's patience enough.  I'm going to begin looking for an alternative. 

If I'm going to have to rebuild my pages, I might has well rebuild in an environment that let's me layout and brand to my organization's branding properly without hacks or fighting with the programmers.

g'bye Confluence.

Does anyone have ideas on alternates??

[Jackie Holen]

Where is the multi Undo and Redo? SERIOUSLY YOU NEED TO ADD THIS!

[Pradnya Nagpure]

Team,

  This is urgent, please let us know,how to check if the legacy editor template is enabled at our site? Also if it is not enabled, what are the steps to enable it? Will it cost anything?

Currently all new pages have new editor, if we have legacy editor enabled at our site, how can we have legacy editor on the new pages that we create?

We are in process of switching to new tool, so please respond urgently.

Thanks

[Pradnya Nagpure]

Other members, please suggest good alternatives, I need to final another tool in next 2 days. I want to represent my data more precisely in eye-catchy ways, the big procedures in good structure rather than just bullet points. Visual appearance for users should be impressive, so they can read the content.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks
PN

[Rob Schlüter]

What I don't understand in the whole discussion about the multiple editors is why does it matter to the stored page which one is used? The editor should only determine the user interface to edit the contents. The structure and data should not depend on the user interface.

Compare it to editing a Word document. I can use use Word, but others that I give the document can use LibreOffice or Pages or whatever they want. It's the document format that matters, not the editor.

It would be great if Confluence let's each user pick their preferred tool to edit a page. That should not influence the presentation when viewed.

And a second suggestion, please provide the same text editing tools, shortcuts and macro's across Atlassian products. So that when I know the Confluence editor I can use the same options, functions and keyboard shortcuts to edit comments, JIRA descriptions etc.

[David Allyn]

@Rob SchlüterFrom a technical perspective, the editor and the document are linked... even LibreOffice and Word will format things ever-so-slightly different.  If you were to open the file from the "backside" you would see they are written very differently.

Think of it as different screws and screw drivers.  A flat-head screw, a Phillips head screw, a hex head screw, and a Torx screw are all screws - but they can't be unscrewed without the correct screwdriver.

In essence, what Atlassian has done is taken a page that is built with Philips screws using a Philips screw driver, and "converted" your page to Torx screws forcing you to use the Torx screwdriver. Not a problem, necessarily, except the Torx driver they give us just breaks the screws.

Frankly, I've never seen this level of disregard for user complaints.  And, I've never seen a product get *less* features than the previous product.

Your second suggestions have been long-standing suggestions from many, many users.  The general gripe of this thread is the silence from Atlassian on these issues.  And when they do talk - it's "we're working on it" - but they aren't.

I think the overall issue is that they started promoting themselves as a way for business people to build documentation and tracking sites and then somehow decided not to.   What to do with the business users?  Ignore them, and they'll eventually get fed up and leave.

Sad.

[Nicole]

Agreed, @David Allyn. You hit the screw, errr nail on the head!

[Ira Chandler]

So, @David Allyn, are you saying we are screwed?

[Rob Schlüter]

@David Allynas a developer myself I can understand there are differences. But as a user I prefer templates, editors and output to be consistent.

For now I add pages by copying an existing one that was created with the "old" editor.

[David Allyn]

@Rob Schlüterdefinitely - I agree with you, and I do use that technique.  But as you probably intuit, we are on borrowed time with that workaround.

[Kim Hirschman]

It's also really awkward as a technique.  We had a lot of useful templates but now cannot use them because they no longer show the what did you change field.  It's difficult to remember to clone and alter existing pages and even more difficult to get other people who are happily unaware of this whole mess to remember to do this.

[David Allyn]

Has anyone tried setting up a WordPress site on Amazon Web Services?? https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/hands-on/launch-a-wordpress-website/

There would be amazon fees, and you'd have to set up and administrate the site... IDK, has anyone thought of this?

[Tiffany]

Hi @Pradnya Nagpure

To see if you have the Legacy Editor template, search "Legacy Editor template" in the templates and blueprints search bar. If you don't see it, could you please reach out to Atlassian support and ask to enable the "Legacy Editor template". There is no cost in enabling the legacy editor template. 

[stevemc]

Why is it still called the "Legacy Editor" if its not going away? Please rename.

And if not going away, please allow our admin to set the default to "Legacy Editor" 

Does anyone know about following:

1. Can you create new templates using the "Legacy Editor"?
   • Only "Legacy" templates I have are ones I created long ago.
2. Can you set the default template (so the default is a Legacy Editor page)?
3. Can you convert a "New Editor" page to a "Legacy Editor" page?

[Nicole]

@stevemc: I believe you need to contact Atlassian support to get the template enabled. I have an active ticket for that myself. They will let you know, however, that the Legacy editor is no longer supported, so if something breaks or stops working you'll be SOL. So while Atlassian says it's not going away, I think eventually it actually will or it will be rendered useless. I find I get a better response submitting a request than posting to the community because then I am guaranteed a response and there's a record or a "paper trail".

[V-G]

Thanks a lot, its good to know that the legacy editor is not going away.

However, after some digging, the "Blank page (old) (going away soon)"  is not showing on my account. I searched the whole list, but no luck. Do you have any clue as of why?

Thanks a lot for your help.

[Jan Bauer]

Found a new problem today: when creating a link in the new editor, pointing to another confluence page with a deep link to a chapter, the deep linking does not work anymore.

Like: https://myorg.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PROJECT/pages/12345678/Confluence-Page#Chapter-Deeplink

This worked in the old editor without issues, so this can be considered a bug.

Update: appears that others found this as well, see also https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Anchor-macros-randomly-break/qaq-p/75581

[Kim Hirschman]

Instead of thinking of loyalty to the classic version as a hindrance, Atlassian should congratulate themselves for having built a platform that people have found so useful that they are willing to spend a lot of time posting to these forums and investigating replacements.  (By the way, the alternatives will be happy for new customers and, if they are smart, will build a lovely import tool to make it easier for us to transition over.)

So, I am reviving an older suggestion of mine:  Let's reframe the "legacy" version as "Confluence Classic." Then it might be time to roll it back to what it was before. I know it had feature requests and outstanding bugs but I for one would be happy to get back to where it was before, take a breath , and move on from there.

And then, Atlassian, keep the two branches growing.  Don't let the classic version wither away because you don't want to commit any resources to it because your customers will wither away too.  Just sayin'

[Tiffany]

@V-G could you try searching for "legacy editor template". If you can't find it, please let the support team know and they can enable it for you.