After pasting an image, get "broken image"

Rich Stern October 8, 2018

Hi Everyone

I looked through the threads about this issue and mostly have seen people reporting it for years and years.  Not too much by way of solutions.

After pasting an image, get "broken image".  I am pasting directly from the MIcrosoft "Snipping Tool".

Here is an example: " [com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.XhtmlException: Missing required attribute: {http://atlassian.com/resource/identifier}value]"

Using FireFox 62.03 and Internet Explorer 11.285.17134.0 on Windows 10 Build 17134.285.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

39 answers

21 votes
HOB January 27, 2022

I found a work around, Don't Use Confluence. 

Wasted hours added images of MS Excel plots which viewed fine in edit mode, but no trace of images when published. Tried Edge and  Chrome , same results. 

What's astonishing is for such a key feature, this has been a reported bug for years and an unresolved Jira item for two and a half years. As usual push back is that the users should try alternative entry methods rather than Atlassian fixing the bug.

Maybe we're meant to buy a Marketplace addon for pasting images as well?  

Hauke Hörhold
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November 21, 2022

Nailed it :)

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Chris Friend January 27, 2023

Agreed.  We are currently undergoing our company-wide migration to Notion due to numerous issues like this.

Like Gerrit Berberich likes this
Counter March 3, 2023

There could not be a more appropriate answer.
I'm just switching from server to cloud and every day I stumble upon the simplest things that do not work (which I then just grudgingly define as not functionally relevant) or
sometimes work in this ridiculous junk software Confluence (especially when tested before migration!)
I'm guaranteed not to list the problems here again, they're completely ignored anyway!

The same goes for addons that work in the server version, but can at most display their name in the cloud version.
Extensively frustrating

Andras Blake March 7, 2023

Given the absolutely insane price increases for Confluence Cloud, this is our solution now, too. Migrate and be done with it. Which is sad, because I'm not a SharePoint fan, but... que sera sera.

6 votes
ccanfield May 18, 2021

This makes Confluence almost useless for design documentation, as we'll invest hours in creating detailed visual specifications only to have them disappear in a sea of broken images.  Heck, I'm looking at a page of 18 broken images right now, and wondering if I can convince the team to switch back to Google Docs.  

Owen Wallis
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
May 23, 2021

Hi, where were you pasting the images from? An existing Confluence page? If so did the page have any restrictions on it? Or were you pasting from an external source?

Ganesh Babu J November 10, 2021

Hi @Owen Wallis

We are also facing the same issue, Is this issue resolved in 7.13.2? Currently we are on 6.15.2. Let me know on the same

Owen Wallis
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
November 11, 2021

Hi, sorry looks like you are referring to Server? My team only owns the Cloud experience apologies.

Brandon Phillips November 11, 2021

See my comment from Oct 5, 2021 below.    My issue was observed on the Cloud Instance.  

Owen Wallis
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
November 11, 2021

Hi Brandon, great I can help. Perhaps we can find a time to talk so I can take a look https://calendly.com/owallis

5 votes
Amanda Quinn May 19, 2021

I've had the same issue - Very irritating when we publish our content after having done all that work only to find that the most important pieces can't be seen by our readers.

What works for my team is to save the images (i.e. on our desktop or in a folder) and then drag/drop them in to the document. Not ideal, but better than broken images.

Jonathan Costa March 7, 2023

Worked thanks - Drag and drop is not a game changer so It's fine by me

5 votes
Will Dowling November 6, 2019

I have the same issue, MacOS, Chrome. Copy image from Chrome Jupyter notebook onto clipboard.  Paste into Slack works fine, proving it's not "user error".  Paste into Confluence appears to work while editing, but then shows up as "broken image" when viewing the page.  It would be great if Confluence fixed this bug.  Thanks!

4 votes
Lexi Carver December 15, 2021

This makes it very hard to use Confluence at times. It's good to know the issue is not on my end, but I'm discouraged that it has been around for this long.

A couple points about the workarounds made so far:

  • I'm convinced it's not an issue either on the browser end or on the image end, because I've tried with 3 different browsers and copying the image from many different programs (Snagit, Photoshop, Teams, MS Word, Paint, and more).
  • I have also tried attaching the image files into the Confluence page rather than pasting them, and I have the same display problem.
  • I've resorted to the really bad workaround of adding white space to my images because any image smaller than around 350 pixels (!?!) shows up as a broken link. This means it's actually impossible to use small icons inline at all in Confluence unless you want them to take up an entire line.

PLEASE fix!!!

4 votes
Matt Gurney December 1, 2021

I am getting the same issue. I copied some images out of a MS Teams chat and pasted them into Confluence. They looked fine on the confluence page until the confluence page is saved. My work around was to use Windows screen capture (Win-Shift-s) of the images within  MS Teams, then paste that into Confluence, seems to work so far.

Atlassian, please fix this. If the images look fine in Teams, and look fine in Confluence when pasted (before page saved), I find it hard to believe it is some clipboard related error.

Lily Qin September 19, 2023

Yeah, please fix this Atlassian!  I have exactly the same problem on a Mac!

3 votes
Michael Heilman June 20, 2023

This issue is perfectly well defined and has been happening for +five years.

It is basic functionality for a documentation system.

Atlassian knows about it, there have been staff interacting on this thread.

This is mind-boggling and frustrating. Basic functionality that I use 30 times a day and which breaks at least half the time.

Andras Blake June 21, 2023

And the fun thing is, you can add an image, and it works, but edit a page and save, and existing images will break. It's a joke, and it made it very difficult to argue for keeping Confluence in favor of just switching over to SharePoint. In the end, that became a solution to a number of things.

Like Christopher Turner likes this
3 votes
Daniel Corrigan October 5, 2021

Same issue on new or existing documents. 

Confluence Data Center 7.13.0

Google Chrome 94.0.4606.61 (Official Build) (64-bit) on Linux

It works on Firefox 92.

 

Matt C_ Wilson November 10, 2021

Just had it happen to me for two out of three images on a particular page.

Was using Firefox 94.0.1 (64-bit)

Owen Wallis
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
November 10, 2021

Hi Matt,

Happy to try and diagnose if you can find a time with me https://calendly.com/owallis

Renni Verho November 11, 2021

Hi,

we have seen same issue with Linux,  Chromium Version 95.0.4638.69 (Official Build) and Atlassian Confluence 7.14.1. 

give : com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.XhtmlException: Missing required attribute: {http://atlassian.com/resource/identifier}value

 

Windows Version 95.0.4638.69 (Official Build) (64-bit) pasting worked ok. 

Matt C_ Wilson May 11, 2022

Hi Owen - sorry I missed you back in November.  I just had it happen again this morning.

One observation - part of my flow has me take a largish (1150x400px) screenshot to add to a doc.

I notice that, when I paste, sometimes the image displays full size.  When that happens, the publish step will cause the Broken Image behavior.

Other times when I paste, the image will appear resized to fit content width, with the image controls underneath.  When that happens, the publish step will succeed.

Here are some very meta example images that I've made.  I took a screen cap of me making this very post, and pasted it into Confluence.  The first pair of images show that when the image pastes "full width", it will yield the Broken Image error.  The second pair of images show that when the image pastes "shrunk to fit", it does not yield the error (and can be resized back to full width if desired by using the Original button on the image toolbar).

Hope this helps.  I don't check this forum regularly - if it would be best to try to reproduce live please email me and we'll schedule a time.  matt.wilson at olo.com

example1.pngbadoutcome.pngexample2.pnggoodoutcome.png

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Owen Wallis
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
June 8, 2022

Thanks, looks like you are using the legacy editor which is where these issues may be stemming from.

I'll drop you an email to check.

Like Gerrit Berberich likes this
2 votes
Mike Haro April 26, 2023

I'm also facing this exact same issue so I guess it still hasn't been resolved.  I did notice that the document I was working on which was an import from a word document where a lot of the images scattered through out the document started showing the broken image message.  And trying to replace them back by copy/pasting them from the document that was imported they keep showing up as broken links when the page is updated.  

I happened to try clicking on the Insert files and images button.  And in that screen on the "Attached to this page" shows exactly 50 images.  So wondering if there is a 50 image limit imposed on the document???

Lily Qin September 19, 2023

This is not resolved as of today, 09/19/2023!

2 votes
Amanda Quinn September 3, 2020

Same issue. We have to upload our images or some of our users won't be able to see them.

Also, every time there's a problem or upgrade, the images in all our drafts break. Separate issue, but related to images and very time consuming to fix. :(

2 votes
Cem Karadeniz July 23, 2020

Same issue sporadically on Chrome 84

2 votes
Yoga Reddy {Appfire}
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October 9, 2018

Hi Rich Stern,

In the past, we have seen if you fill the clear space with white, for example, then the image copies and pastes successfully into Confluence, therefore it may be a snipping tool / User error, it has nothing to do with confluence.
The best will be to attach the images into the Confluence Page rather than copying the page. When you copy, sometimes it may not render properly

And also please follow this article as well and let us know.

Thanks

Yoga

Rich Stern October 19, 2018

 Not sure why this is an "Accepted Answer" - I do not accept it :)

1) 

My point of view: why not fix the bug in Atlassian which breaks images that do not have white space, so these products can be as good as ones from other vendors, and not ask users to perform a duct tape and bubblegum style work around? 

2)

Saving and uploading images and / or editing them is time consuming and painful

3)

I don’t even really understand what space needs to be filled or how to do it. The images are already cropped to just a screenshot.  I don’t believe there was any clear space?

THANKS!

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Mike S August 2, 2019

I've noticed the same issue. Someone on our team just created an article by pasting in images but there was no transparency in them... It seems to work or not work without any discernible pattern. 

Christopher Turner April 28, 2022

"...therefore it may be a snipping tool / User error, it has nothing to do with confluence."

Unacceptable. If I could downvote, I would. Copy pasting from every single other medium to any other medium of choice produces no problems. It has everything to do with Confluence. 

As for https://confluence.atlassian.com/confkb/when-pasting-an-image-into-the-editor-the-image-is-not-attached-correctly-757729008.html : Where is manage addons? I assume this is outdated.

Sorry to res this necro'd thread - but hey I'm completely unable to give massive tutorials to several teams of artists right now and we're miffed.

Christopher Turner April 28, 2022

I actually edited the above message to apologize for necroing this thread, but surprise surprise clicking submit does nothing and editing my message is impossible. 
Suffice to say I can't get large tutorials to several teams of artists right now and it's super frustrating. Confluence is useless right now. 

1 vote
Sandeep Mendonca May 3, 2023

I got the same error while copy pasting off Microsoft Word but after I switched to Paint app I was able to copy paste successfully. I do not know the root cause of the issue but the workaround seems to be to source the image from Paint app.

Smita Eapen
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December 6, 2023

This workaround helped me. Thanks!

1 vote
John Calcagni March 15, 2023

I found using the SnagIt Tool works.
Not direct solution, but fast.
Simply select the image from the non-confluence app, SnagIT,
From the SnagIt Editor you can copy and paste into Confluence page.
No need to save the image

Andras Blake March 15, 2023

... It is still saved to the page. It isn't just images that are saved as a file first. Any screen cap can do this in certain circumstances.

1 vote
Jonathan Berkeley March 3, 2023

Issue reported 5 years ago but still present.

1 vote
Tobias June 30, 2022

Hello togehter, 
I have reviewed this issue and faced the same problem. Using chrome Version 102.0.5005.115 and Confluence 7.13.7. Our users reported that the behaviour is present when using snipping tool and pasting this to the editor, really annoying. 

I saw that there is an open bug for this. Status Gathering impact, what is really confusing for me, big thing in my opinion: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-26011

1 vote
Itaú Unibanco March 3, 2022

Same issue here. That's really very annoying and irritating. 

The Confluence workflow gets very unsustainable since we would have to always save any image locally and then upload via upload-image-button. The drag and drop or copy/paste should work normally.

1 vote
John Naughton January 19, 2022

Looks like a bug has been created for this issue:

Pasting an image in the editor fails and results in the server exception

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-65792

1 vote
anirudhaku December 9, 2021

Same issue on pasting from powerpoint (used to work earlier). Tried with both Chrome (Version 96.0.4664.45) and Edge (Version 96.0.1054.43). Pretty sure the issue is with confluence.

My org recently updated confluence from 6.xx to 7.13.1. This could be a bug in this newer confluence version.

Another thing worth mentioning is that earlier on pasting the image would show up in attachments with an autogenerated name. Now, I don't see any attachment either.

1 vote
Renard Korzeniowski December 2, 2021

Same issue, firefox 91.3.0esr (64-bit). Horrible user experience

1 vote
Abdelhalim ELKHATTABI November 30, 2021

same issue here!!

1 vote
Brandon Phillips October 5, 2021

I am having the same issue.  It worked for years then stopped recently.  In fact it stopped in the middle of a new page.  The first few images worked, then the last couple did not.  

 

Tried a new page today none worked. 

 

Symptoms: 

All images are partial  screenshots, directly copied and pasted.

Image and page render fine in "edit mode" initially - but fail when the page is viewed, also fail when trying to re-edit the page.  

It seems like the upload is not being stored properly.

Matt C_ Wilson November 10, 2021

Agree that it seems like the upload is not being stored.  It does not show up under the page attachments view either.

1 vote
Kemal Tuncelli February 3, 2021

we also have this issue sporadically in any browser... It is really pain in the a..

1 vote
Peter Howe June 4, 2020

Same issue sporadically - latest Chrome

1 vote
Deleted user November 27, 2019

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