Change to your content is in your hands

[chris]

@Aleksandr Paren- Atlassian has made it obvious they don't really care.

You might be able to work-around the issue. Go to an existing page that was created using the old editor. In the menu at top-right of the page, hit the elipses and from the context menu, choose "Copy" (ie. copy the page). It will create a copy of the page - and hopefully you will see it is still using the legacy editor. Just rename your copy as needed, then move it to wherever you need it. Hope this helps.

PS - if you find a great Confluence alternative, please share here. Many of us feel stuck because we have lots of content with Confluence Cloud, but Atlassian clearly does not care to support us, even though we are paying customers.

[Aleksandr Paren]

Hi Chris, thank you. Yes I use it workaround already. And of course, we started research for other alternatives, because new editor not allow to create technical contents, it is noctly for bloggers, managers and other such stuff. I think if I share information about another alternative Atlassian will delete this message here. 

What can say, now we can see how any company can destroy itself.

[Aleksandr Paren]

Ok. Today when I wrote in support. And got the answer. See my screenshot below. Also if you are need to enable this template, you need to submit the request ticket.

• Click on 'create'.
• Look for 'Legacy editor page'.

Note:

• The template will not go away anytime soon until most of the missing features are not available in the new editor.
• Though the new editor is a default editor now no existing page with the old editor will be migrated to the new editor without your consent.

[chris]

@Aleksandr Paren- that has never worked for me - screenshot below. I have tried contacting support but the link provided in this thread is general and takes you to endless articles, not an actual support. When I contacted support they told me I reached the wrong department and closed my ticket. When I protested here and tagged Tiffany from Atlassian she said she'd follow up but I haven't seen the editor enabled. When I asked why we have to actively request that a legacy editor be re-enabled despite it is "not going away anywhere soon", I got no answer. No matter how many times we complain on this thread, Atlassian simply does not care about its customers.

Please, if anyone finds a good alternative, do share it here.

[Rodney Hughes]

We still don't know what problems the new editor fixed by cutting out half the features of the legacy editor 

Perhaps we should stop calling it the "legacy editor" and call it the BETTER EDITOR or the MORE POWERFUL Editor to  drive home the point! 👌👍

I doubt I could post in a public forum what name I'd suggest for the latest editor!

Yes it is a bit difficult to follow links to get someone to "fix" the problem they created with the latest editor.

I eventually got contacted by someone who did help

jirastudio-support-system@am.atlassian.com

He created a new template page in my Confluence instance with the old legacy editor ... so I can create any new pages with that.

However the legacy editor template will not automatically be applied to any existing pages created with the latest editor.

BUT

Ricardo Nascimento, Cloud Support Engineer, also said :

"but please keep in mind that this [legacy] editor is going away at some point"

What that means to pages created with the old editor is anyone's guess

[Nathan Morris]

And in the meantime... Confluence Server is quickly being discontinued. Forcing us into the Confluence Cloud Beta experiment of incomplete software.

We are actively looking for Atlassian Confluence alternatives after being customers for more than 15 years.

[chris]

@Nathan Morris- yeah, I saw that announcement - by Februrary you can't purchase a license to run the server version yourself, and by 2014 they will discontinue support. Quite possibly the only viable solution at the moment is to buy up a server license and self-host. Pretty sucky though - for example, there are add-ins for the cloud version that don't exist in server. Like you, been using Confluence for 10+ years and like others have said, had recommended it strongly, but no more, and the corporate attitude makes me recommend against Atlassian now.

[Aleksandr Paren]

@chris all things that happen now with the Atlassian products talk us about two things: New chiefs and management came into the company and decides completely change the strategy, and the second one goes from the first this is the financial and organizational problems. Of course, if you are using many years Confluence Cloud or Server instances you and your company created many specific contents with the macroses and other special components in the Confluence. Any other alternative will be very hard to migrate for users and the company will fill great pain. Unfortunately, I have to accept the fact that the many years the Confluence has a very good usability and If you migrate to another instance, it will be very hard. Also, I can't imagine for users of the Confluence Server that they should migrate for Cloud because a lot of specific plugins and features not exist in Cloud and it has another architecture. 

I look into other open sources Wikis such as: DokuWiki, MediaWiki and XWiki. For me was XWiki because it has a special plugin for import content from Confluence, BUT all of these instances not have such a comfort place for work. It means that we have standard case that Software company like Atlassian creates "Dead end" when the users can use only that software and not other.

The very sad history that Atlassian has very good products and services and very sad that maybe somebody of the great managers decides what will be better for not thinking about the full situation.

God bless all of us and our content!

Also, as idea create petition at the https://www.change.org/ that Atlassian should stop their bad movement for the users. Migrate all features from the old editors for the new and stay for all old editor.

[chris]

@Aleksandr Paren- not sure who deleted your comment, but thanks for posting it. I will look into some of the alternatives you mentioned and I agree - extracting content from Confluence is going to be painful because it is a proprietary system and therefore there is no easy/standard way to port it to other systems.

[Rodney Hughes]

@NathanMaris and @Chris

I concur that the announcement is no-one will be able to buy a SERVER licence for the first time after next year.

and the last version upgrade you could download will be in 2024

But since SERVER means you have Confluence installed on your OWN HOST's platform, you can just keep using that FOREVER at whatever version you are running in 2024.

My host has said he even has one instance where their customer is happy to stay on v3.x!!

So our organisations option-eering strategy for our SERVER instance is

"don't worry, do nothing except for a final version upgrade in 2024."

🍾👍👌

But I do hope that along the path to 2024, Atlassian will attend to all the "tidy up" enhancements we have been asking for SERVER for a long time 

in no particular priority:

• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-43372 Provide a macro setting entry as @parent (similar to @self)
• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-58555 additional display columns in Attachments macro
• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-58565 Increasing color palette options - full RGB control
• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-58584 eliminate colons in autonaming of image attachments
• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-59003 non-breaking hyphen (dash)
• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-59123 Multimedia Macro should have option for viewers to view as full screen
• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-59758 extra format of Page Restriction Lock Icon
• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-59823 Email Notifications should send short URL
• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-5095 inheriting Edit Restrictions
  This one is particularly annoying as I was involved in reviewing the Atlassian solution to that early LAST year so the announcement that it is too hard is really annoying to say the least!
• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-2814 Copy Page Hierarchy
  Whilst this has been MOSTLY fixed, there is one aspect that still needs to be ADDED to the Copy option tick boxes– the ability to <<Copy with Comments>>
• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-26696 due dates for tasks

✌✌✌✌✌✌✌✌✌✌👁👁

ten fingers and ten toes and two eyes crossed - can't find crossed arms and legs 😀

[Robert Lauriston]

Chris, getting content into Confluence is a challenge, but there are lots of ways to get it into something else.

Depending on what you migrate to, Scroll DocBook Exporter, HTML Exporter, or Word Exporter might be a good intermediate format. Pandoc can convert DocBook into many formats.

Some tools, such as Paligo and MadCap Flare, can import Confluence content directly.

Some tools, such as Notion and Twiki, have specific converters.

[Aleksandr Paren]

Chris admins deleted, because I think my message broke the rules. Anyway I think we have stop this discussion, believe for the best and wait that Atlassian will hear us.

[Brian Marble]

This is nice, but there are dozens of features and macros that were removed in the run-up to the new editor.  Will there be ongoing support and improvement for the old editor (call it the Advanced Editor), or is it legacy functionality that will only work until there is an architectural change that permanently breaks it and Atlassian puts out a half-hearted apology and points to all of the great auto-formatting that the new editor can do, even though the capabilities aren't even a quarter of what Confluence could do five years ago.

I'm glad that it's easy to make Duplo-style pages, but I don't like that Atlassian has pushed the Lego-style editor to the side after getting rid of any pieces that can move.  SharePoint is worse, but being the best amongst a slate of options that range from disappointing to terrible isn't something to brag about.

[Sabina Ivancic]

HOW do i reach out to support? I am  extremely frustrated that our space has been converted, without notice, to new editor, which is incomplete, irrelevant and limiting to the... 

[Rodney Hughes]

@Sabina Ivancic 

It wasn't quite "without notice"

but it was certainly a surprise meant that ?new" meant "functionality and capability severely stripped down and harder to use"

Re contacting them .. refer my post above on 3rd Nov 2020

[Matthew Tanner]

And if you don't like the new editor...too bad!

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-67748

[Brandon Meyer]

It is sad to read these comments praising about clarification of something that SHOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

[Peter Kidson]

Being much more advanced,  what we need is for the Legacy editor to be the default.  Or alt least make that an Admin option.
And rename it to the Professional Editor, and the new one the Lite Editor.

[chris]

@Peter Kidson- I think the issue is that the content produced by each editor is not interchangeable between editors. You can't simply switch between editors. They are two different products. I think you need to be able to sign up for one or the other.

As an aside, when I opened this page (for the Nth time), I got an alert saying "Way to go - you've earned the Reading Rainbow badge".

@Atlassian - which do you think I prefer ... I mean really prefer ... to be able to use a powerful toolset that lets me work quickly, efficiently and productively, or to collect your rainbow badges? Please get your priorities right.

[Peter Kidson]

Actually you can downgrade from the Legacy editor to the new one,  but not upgrade from the new one to the Legacy one.

[Joe Bloggs]

Is there any news on this? Just got into that rabbit hole today, what a mess!!!

[Jeanne Howe]

Looking for Atlassian to give us the option of which editor we use as a "default". Please help by voting for this issue.

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-71078 

As admins, we should be able to set the default editor used by the instance for all pages/blogs being created.

As a  user, I should have the option of setting my personal default within my profile.

Thank you

[David Allyn]

The title of this thread is misleading, and it suggests that the more people vote up the more priority something is given.  The "wisdom of the crowd" principle of this is fine enough, however there are some things that shouldn't be left up to the guidance of "the crowd".

Why?  Because "the crowd" are programmers.  Business users are a small portion of the people that follow Atlassian product development - because we are not programmers who do this for a living.

So, we are less prone to promote enhancements.  We will simply scowl at the screen and deal with the problems without saying anything until we're so frustrated we have to find a thread to comment on. 

Why??? because time is money!! and money spent on trying to make Atlassian do the right thing is money wasted.  Especially when programmer opinion is the only opinion that will be up-voted enough to gain Atlassian's attention.

If Atlassian wants business users (and not programmers), then they will need to change quality of the editing experience.  Personally, if I can do it in MS Office, then I should be able to do it on a Confluence page. 

No up-voting necessary.

[Joe Bloggs]

It's not a legacy editor - it's the only properly working editor you have. Good to see some commonsense.

[chris]

@Joe Bloggs- the news on this is, even though you only discovered it a month ago, it's been sitting with Atlassian for 2 years now. They don't really care. We're stuck because we can't export our data to another system and they've discontinued licensing the server version.