Convert your old pages to the new editor

[mawi]

The downgrade to the new editor is too large, IMO.

Chiming in the choir of users that need atleast some of the features of the old editor.  Table content cannot be manipulated like before, copy paste of rows and columns has been removed. Tables basically cannot contain anything but text anymore, it seems. Expand macro is equally handicapped ( and cannot be used in tables, very useful way of working with organizing alot of content in tables ). Version comments are gone. etc etc

There are a few things that are marginally better (one central column, good visual). The table UI is alot more intuitive, but the removed featureset is substantial.

The new editor is good for simple content, blog-like stuff.
The old editor has features that are very useful in creating more substantial documentation.

[Jen]

Hello,  From an email we just received last week - It appears that everyone is now being forced into the new page editor/viewer.  Is there still an opportunity to batch update the entire site?

[Tiffany]

Hello @Jen We are not forcing anyone into the new editor. The email sent last week, if I'm referring to the same one, is a new feature in the product that allows you to convert a page from the old to new editor on a page-by-page basis. It's totally up to you and other users whether or not this is something you want to do, and would always appreciate any feedback. In terms of batch converting, that is something the team is currently working on and aim to release in a few months. 

[Gina Palombit]

Why have a new editor if it doesn't support many of the macros or formatting functions that the old editor supported? Also, when I click on the button to "Preview my page" using the new editor, it does nothing. Can Atlassian please merge the two editors to make a good one?

[Bob Sovers]

I still find it hilarious that the "new" editor, which has been in use for over 18 months, is still being described as new!  I realize that the "fabric" editor is newer than the "TinyMCE" editor which preceded it, but come on now, how long will Atlassian try explain that this is just "new stuff".  After 18 months, it has lost any luster!

[Jawann]

I really wish the new editor had feature parity with the old editor before it was released.

[Cassandra Myer]

To @Jawann and others, we had Atlassian support give us back the ability to use the old editor, at least for now. When creating a page, we have the option to choose to create the page using the "Legacy editor page" (via templates). If you do that, the div macro is still available. 

Another way you can get to the legacy editor is by copying an existing legacy editor page, rather than creating new. You can do that and create a kind of template for new pages. It's not a great way to manage the creation of new pages, but allows us to circumvent the bad editor that has been foisted on us. 

[Jawann]

I really wish the new editor had feature parity with the old editor before it was released.

[Jack Brickey]

 @Jawann , if you have not already done so you might want to open a support ticket or add feedback via the feedback link?

[Tiffany]

Hi @Jawann

Thank you for raising this issue. This is not intended behavior and we apologize for the experience you're having with page conversions. We truly want to dig deeper to understand why this is happening as it should be flagging any unsupported content. If you are an admin, it would greatly benefit the team if you could file a ticket or respond via the feedback collector in the product regarding this issue. I hear you and everyone on multiple threads regarding the new editor. It's not suitable for you and your team's needs and for as long as this remains the case, the legacy editor will remain available to use. Please feel free to continue reaching out here as our team is actively listening to your feedback and here to help.

[Jawann]

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[Jawann]

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[Jawann]

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[Jawann]

@Tiffany I appreciate the reply. Let me preface this by saying that I know Atlassian is a large organization and I know everyone has the best intentions, but I am incredibly frustrated after the last few weeks.

I'm glad the Atlassian team is actively listening, but I'm concerned it's not hearing us. Let me try to sum up the feelings of the entire community in one sentence:

We do not have time to be your regression testers.

On the afternoon of Tuesday 5/19/2020, at least three PDF-related regression issues were introduced:

1. My custom font stopped working
2. The styling of Heading 4 changed
3. Line breaks started being applied differently in some cases (one word earlier)

The same page that created a perfect PDF export in the morning all of a sudden had these issues just a few hours later. There were no changes to the stylesheet the issues affected documents that had not been edited for months. I spent 2-3 hours troubleshooting on my own, before having my admin log a ticket. Then another hour of getting my admin up to speed on the issue. Atlassian support said they identified the issue and a fix was supposedly applied this week, yet my custom font is still broken. I spent 1-2 hours testing the "fix" to make sure I wasn't doing anything wrong on my side. That's 5-6 hours of my own time trying to fix a problem I didn't cause, ending up with still no solution. Why should that encourage me to waste time logging another ticket?

I was able to work around the other two issues, but there was no answer about why my original implementation stopped working after no changes on our side. It's not worth my time to undo the workaround if I'm just going to find the original issue still present.

Now this new issue with the DIVs. And it's not just the message about converting pages, it appears my DIVs are getting ignored completely in PDF exports. I have a table wrapped in a DIV with page-break-inside:avoid; that has worked for years, but now there's a page break right in the middle of the table.

At this rate, I would never be able to do my actual job again if I had to track down and log a case for every issue I find.

[Cassandra Myer]

The basic message here is that Confluence is not stable and we don't trust it or Atlassian. 

[Gina Palombit]

@Jawann you hit the nail on the head. "We do not have time to be your regression testers." Exactly. I have voiced several concerns with Atlassian to include submitting tickets, upvoting issues, and I even had an hour long conversation with an Atlassian rep who said he would escalate many of the items we discussed. I followed up months later and got an email that said "Here is the status on four items" and they were links to issues that I had the option to upvote. That is not a resolution to my issues. 

I have lost hope that Atlassian will do the right thing. 

[Barbara Storey]

Hello

Is there any way to prevent regular users from converting a page ?

I provide my users with templates in the legacy editor, and tell them to copy legacy pages if needed. BUT I always end up having a (moron) user who clicks on the "This page can be converted to the new editor" green button - adding lots of content and then coming back in tears to me because the exported document doesn't look right !

How can I reserve the conversion ability to no one or at least to an admin ? 

[Askar Kalykov]

.... nothing happened....

[Christoph Lechleitner]

Are you serious?

If the user is not satisfied with the migration experience, they will have the ability to revert the migration to the legacy editor by reverting to the previous version.

What if the user makes changes to the content and wants to go back to the old format without loosing the content changes?

Why does Atlassian keep to make Confluence worse, unusuable even?

[Cassandra Myer]

I'm getting nervous that Atlassian is going to force the new formatting onto use, without any option for the legacy formatting. We have a special template they gave us that allows us to create a page using old formatting. However now whenever I edit a page with legacy formatting, I'm getting a notification that the page is legacy formatting---like I'm supposed to convert it immediately OR ELSE. What are they planning? They think their formatting is fine. All you need to do is compare table creation and mgmt with legacy and new formatting to see that they are delusional. 

Google has been providing great new functionality to their Google Docs/Google Drive including a new approval process. At the ;point that Atlassian forces us to use the HORRIBLE new formatting (hey it has emoji's so it must be good) then we'll look at other options. Google doc formatting is much much better than Confluence. 

[Ben]

What you guys from Atlassian are doing make no sense !
You see a lot of users/admins struggling with basic "new" features which you have changed in your NEW Confluence editor.

I am a happy confluence user since 2016, I have worked for a company as admin with 300 Confluence/Jira users and we had fun in creating documenation with confluence with the OLD conlfuence editor.

Now since 2 months I am representing a company with 26.000 employee in the netherlands and this company does not yet work with Confluence.  Today I started to look for the possibilitys to use Confluence and during a test I discoverd the NEW editor. When the new editor is the way to go for Atlassian my company will never use  Confluence. !!  Why tyou are stripping basic functionality ?!

I hope that Atlassian is wise enough to fix the issues which are addressed in this ticket like nested tables and more. I think you are because this is the first time I have an real insurmountable issue. So please fix this.