New! Keep your spaces tidy by deleting content in bulk

[#1]

Hi Atlassian Community,

I’m John, a Product Manager focused on improving the experience of admins within Confluence Cloud. I’m excited to share that you can now delete your content items in bulk!

We're striving to enable efficient content management in Confluence Cloud, and we believe that the capability to bulk delete content items is a foundational content curation tool that, frankly, we've been overdue to add to Confluence's toolkit.

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How to delete content in bulk from your page tree

First, click on the three dot menu of the parent content item that you'd like to delete the branch of:

Next, after clicking the Delete option, make sure that the box next to the Include nested pages option is checked:

Finally, click the delete button and voilà! Your parent content item and the items nested beneath it will have been deleted!

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How to delete content in bulk from the Manage Page Tree feature

- note: the Manage Page Tree feature is only available to space admins on our Premium or Enterprise editions

First, navigate to your Space Settings from the left nav:

Then, within the Manage Content within Site Settings, click to enter the Manage Page Tree feature:

Once within the Manage Page Tree feature, check the boxes for the branches of your page tree that you'd like to delete, and then click the delete button towards the top of the page:

Then, click the delete button and all of the selected content will have been deleted:

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FAQs

Which editions of Confluence Cloud is this available to?

- From the content tree: Customers on our Standard, Premium, and Enterprise editions

- From the Manage Page Tree feature: Customers on our Premium and Enterprise editions

Can all users delete content in bulk?

- From the content tree: End users will be able to bulk delete content items that they've been granted delete permissions for

- From the Manage Page Tree feature: Only admins will be able to access the feature

Are there limits to the number of items I can delete at a time?

- Yes. Bulk delete jobs are currently limited to a maximum of 100 content items per job

When can I start deleting my content in bulk?

- Now! Bulk delete capabilities have been fully rolled out to our customers

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Indeed, it was about time for this to be rolled out. Loving the option to delete pages from Manage Page Tree under space settings! 🚮

[Rodrigo]

Sweet! Great feature to have and clean those note-pages! Thank yoouu team 🙌

[Andy Gladstone]

I wish I could say I am looking forward to testing this feature out, but that would be self-incriminating. Instead I’ll say that I am looking forward to creating an environment to test this in. 

[Summer Hogan]

This is very helpful! Thanks @John Hooper 

[Jonathan Smith]

@John Hooper  Has this been rolled out to all customers? I am viewing my sandbox and PROD environment, but I do not see these features. 

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

Related here, that you can automatically bulk-delete pages with the Better Content Archiving app!

You can enter a CQL and a CRON expression, the Execute Automations job  will wake up and delete (trash) all matching content:

You can set it up once and forget it. You can combine multiple automation to an automation scheme and apply the whole scheme to each space where you want this mechanism.

[John Hooper]

@Jonathan Smith - yes, this has been rolled out to all customers on our Standard, Premium, + Enterprise plans.

Please send in a ticket with our support team if you're not finding it to be active for you, and we'll make sure that it is!

[Tami Dubi]

Hi @John Hooper 
Thanks for the update. 

1. I see that the option of delete is for all the nested pages, will there be an option to delete some of the nested pages (select specific nested pages)? 
2. This option is only on delete, what about Archiving? is there a plan also for archiving (for us the archive function is more in use than the delete).
3. Suggestion: will you be able to apply the same process for bulk labeling? 

Best,

Tami

[John Hooper]

Thanks @Tami Dubi ! You are able to select specific pages for bulk action from our Manage Content Tree feature, which you can find within Space Settings

The same can be done with archiving from the feature as well

And we are considering adding bulk label management. Is there anything you can share with me around how you would use that capability and what type of impact it may have for you and your team's work?

[Tami Dubi]

HI @John Hooper ,

Thanks for the swift reply.
We don't have the Content tree feature, is it only for Premium?

[John Hooper]

@Tami Dubi - Ah, my apologies, I forgot to include that in my reply. The Manage content tree feature is a Premium only feature currently

[Tom Hawkins]

What's the best way where more than 100 children on Standard Tier please @John Hooper ? My ref on my own Jira ATL-970, very tedious without a bulk solution! Thanks, Tom 

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

@Tom Hawkins What I suggested above will work on the Standard Plan (and even on Free)!

Basically, just:

1. Create an automation scheme
2. Add a a single automation with:
   1. ...a schedule that executes it only once (in 5 mins, for example)
   2. ...a CQL is like this: ancestor = 123
   3. ...the "Delete" operation

That query matches all descendant of the root page identified by the ID=123.

Basically, the automation will run only once and delete (trash) the whole page tree with that root page. It may not be the most convenient, but still better than clicking "Delete" 100 times.

[John Hooper]

Hi @Tom Hawkins - both the bulk delete and bulk archive capabilities are available from the content tree for customers on the standard edition of Confluence Cloud, so leveraging should help to clean up your space(s) quickly.

Hope that helps and please let me know if you have any other Qs!

[NEGAR JALALIAN]

hi John 

I want to do the same but I don't have "manage page tree ". I'm having standard Confluence . 

[Keith Richardson]

This is sort of lame to paywall an administrative cleanup function like this. If I was on any OS I can just throw files into another folder and delete it. Bulk edit / removing administrative toil isn't really advanced level tooling.

In this case, I move all my pages into one to delete it faster and I get the message that it will kick out nested pages. It's almost like it's a feature to increase toil and encourage a premium package subscription.

We are a smaller company and subscribe to premium Jira and standard confluence.
Saving 45 minutes of work every 6 months ~ year doesn't quite justify the cost.

I am generally an Atlassian advocate. Stuff like this / taking away basic functionality (even if it's just the perception of taking it away) builds some low level resentment.