How do I discard unpublished changes?

[Seth Wylie]

Collaborative editing no longer allows you to discard your changes. It suggests that, instead, you "use undo (Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z) to discard your personal changes".

However, if I'm editing a page, then I leave editing, and then return to editing the page, Undo is not available. The option is greyed-out until I make additional edits.

Someone on our team made some edits they'd like to revert, but they aren't sure of every edit that they made on the page.

[Bruno Miretti]

Hi Seth,

here is the answer I got from the support team regarding this change in the editor:

This is indeed the expected behavior from the latest version of Confluence, and if you don't want to continue with the draft you made earlier, you will have to remove it from the Drafts page

We had also several issues too, publishing updates we didn't want... so at te moment, we "try" to avoid using Confluence (you can imagine I'm not pleased with that)

Please have a look at this page and vote :-)

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-52330

[Seth Wylie]

Thanks so much, Bruno, for pointing me there. As you can see in the post I just made there, I'm also confused why the workaround isn't working for me. Edits I make do not appear in Drafts.

[Sharon Morgan]

I hate this so much. And they've turned off voting for this issue. I need to be able to discard changes, and it's absurd that I have to publish them, then revert back to the prior version.

[Mike Leibensperger]

+1 on the hate.  Like Seth, my unpublished changes do not appear on the drafts page.  How can I get rid of them?  How can I be sure they won't rise from the grave to pollute future edits?

[Barbara Snyder]

Totally agree. My latest edits aren't saved as a draft, and obviously not as a version I can revert to. This is nuts. Luckily I remember what I did so can go in and undo it, but come on! A simple "Discard unpublished edits" would do the job. 

[Dan_Nelson]

Thanks for posting a link to the issue.  Everyone vote for the repair of this now mangled use case.

[Abhay Patil]

Me too. Unpublished changes have to appear in "drafts" for the user to have the choice of discarding or accepting it. 

[Sunny Wong]

Is there a solution to this? How to undo unwanted draft?

[Niklas Kaustinen]

+1 on the hating this new feature. 

[Bruno Miretti]

It seems a solution will be provided in the next coming days as you can see here:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/blog/2018/07/atlassian-cloud-changes-jun-25-to-jul-2-2018#AtlassianCloudchangesJun25toJul2,2018-confluence

Hope this helps

[Jared J]

I feel like I have no control in confluence, and avoid it due to this.

[Brendan Creane]

This is a disappointing issue with confluence. Seems like arrogance and/or incompetence that would cause Atlassian to ignore their users' self-stated needs and go in their own direction.

[cgadam]

Let's say that you accidentally edited a page and for some reason the changes got saved. You'll see then a label "UNPUBLISHED CHANGES" at the top of the page. Then, if you go to "Your recent Work" (wiki/my/recent-work) you'll see the label too.

Now, while being at "Your Recent Work", click the "page" whose changes you want to revert -> click edit button -> At the bottom, next to PUBLISH/CLOSE, click the 3 dots -> You'll see an option named "Revert to last published version". Click it! Accept the dialog that appears next! (Revert Page) And that's it!

If you now go to: "Your recent Work" (wiki/my/recent-work) you won't see the page with the "UNPUBLISHED CHANGES" label (you won't see the label neither in the page itself)

[Andre Vergison]

Hi Christian,

The "recent work" link doesn't work here (6.5.1). Is the following link correct?

https://wiki. ..... .com/my/recent-work

Thanks,
Andre

[cgadam]

Hi Andre,

Sorry, probably I forgot to mention that I'm using the Cloud version of Confluence.

Exact version is:

License Information for Confluence Cloud

Confluence 1000.0.0-e4c9fdd183b

Copyright © 2003 - 2017 Atlassian Corporation Pty Ltd.

It might differ from version to version. Particularly, even on Confluence Cloud it was not so obvious how to delete the UNPUBLISHED CHANGES and that's the reason of my comment above.

As stated in previous comments in this same thread, it's probably different the way in which you might be able to do the same thing in your version, or, it might not have the capability just yet.

Regards,

Christian -

[Davin Studer]

Yeah, the server version doesn't have that yet.

[Meenakshi Bhalla]

with the new updates of confluence, we get an option to get rid of unpublished changes if we wish to discard them.

Following are the steps - 

1. Edit a page where you have unpublished changes 

2. Click on the 3 dots at top right

3. Select the last option "Revert to last published version"

4. Show changes option is available to quickly glance the changes you are going to discard

5. Click on Revert page

And here we go :)

I was also struggling with unpublished changes and then finally found out this.

FYI, the confluence version with above changes

[Andre Vergison]

What I'm plainly miss is the capability of comparing the draft with the last published page.

For instance, when I go and edit a page with "unpublished changes" then what exactly are those changes (made by others) ?

I.o.w. while editing I'm missing a button labeled "Compare to Last Published Page".

I also need such comparison as a verification that nobody mistakenly garbled up a part of the page prior to updating it.

Thanks,
Andre

[Davin Studer]

If you are on the server vs the cloud version of Confluence there is a checkbox with the word "Changes saved" next to it. Click the words and you should see the differences between the currently published version and the unpublished changes.

[Andre Vergison]

Hi Davin,

Do you mean that the cloud version doesn't have it? How does an ordinary user get to know if it's cloud or not?

When I edit a page on 6.5.1 I see the Changes save text as soon as I make a mod (so do we run the server version?). Hovering over it promises to show the changes, but clicking on it doesn't seem to do anything. When I open that link in another window the new window waits forever. (Firefox 59.0.2 64 bit)

Thanks,
Andre

[Davin Studer]

When my answer was published the cloud offering did not have it. I'm not sure if it has it now.

[Andras Racz]

The official documentation now says that they are introducing a feature for discarding a draft, but they are rolling it out gradually (see note at the bottom of the article)

[Jeff Bischoff]

This helped me. Thanks!

Note that you have to be editing the page for the new option to show up in the ellipsis (at the bottom-right corner of the page).

[Abhay Patil]

Actually, for us, it is not the words, but the ellipsis (three dots) at the bottom right corner where one has to click! (This is for the cloud version.)

[Davin Studer]

Yeah, the ellipsis menu has not made it to the server version.

[Davin Studer]

You could make a small edit to the draft (add a space at the end or something) and then clikc close. It will then prompt you if you want to keep the draft and you can opt to discard the draft.

[Troy Meredith]

That didn't work for me, as close "saves draft and closes editor" without prompting.

So I am left with "unpublished changes" and no way see what the changes were, nor to discard them.

[Kristen Swick]

This worked for me! I added a space, hit close, and it prompted me to discard all changes. Thank you!

[Davin Studer]

Glad it worked for you. Unfortunately, this is still the only way I know to get rid of changes. I think this really is an overlooked scenario. They need to have some button somewhere to remove drafts with the new collaborative editor.

[Kristen Swick]

Agreed!

[Andre Vergison]

Overlooked scenario? You bet! The "community" mode of editing is a formidable technical feature, and it works really great. However ... they just did forget that 99% of page editing is NOT community, it is personal.

I just messed up my draft by a wrong paste operation, overwriting my entire page. Thank you guys.

The only workaround I see is to save the bad draft and then to immediately revert to the previous revision. And this pollutes the page history, too.

As a minimum, removing the draft should be possible at any time whenever nobody else but you did make changes.

(6.5.1)

[Andre Vergison]

Not wanting to give up, I tried changing the draft and hitting the Close button multiple times in a row, and ALL OF A SUDDEN the Discard / Keep Draft dialog showed up! Yeah!

So, question to Atlassian, what exactly does the show dialog depend on?

[Andre Vergison]

Nobody at Atlassian knows the answer?

[elfrey]

This thread is pretty old, but I had the same problems: Unpublished, unwanted changes that I could not get rid of via version history (so stale) or My Drafts (where you can Discard *only* if the changes appear as a legit draft).

SOLUTION: Go to the page. Under the "..." menu at upper left, select 'Copy', a copy of your page will spin up, hit 'Close' (button right). You now have a copy of your *untainted page* in your drafts. Go to Drafts to see it. I hit Resume from there and simply copied and pasted from that version replacing tainted content in the tainted version. (I went are by area, rather than a full page copy and paste. I knew I'd only edited the CSS and a few macros). Use Preview to check. Sure enough! Fixed. Hit Publish. 

[Paul Wade]

Oops didn't see this until now, yes you're right this works.

[Deleted user]

[nskulkarni240]

Here is what helped me discard the unwanted changes. 

In Top Right corner, hoover on your profile picture and select 'Recently worked on'.. It will take to you your recent changes. Browse the list of changes and restore the page to the version you desire.

Hope it is helpful. 

[Andre Vergison]

Just a thought. I'm one and all positive about Confluence, no word about that. However, Atlassian introduced the collaborative editing as a ubiquitous, mandatory way of editing content. Each methodology has its drawbacks. The superior collaborative editing is, the more frustrating it can be for 99 percent of the simple individual content editing. Yes, 99 percent is just individual changes. But now, if I open someone else page, I mess up the content deep near the end of it - let's say by mistake - and I merely "close" the page then this person (and others) may continue to change content later on without even ever having seen what I did !! Besides the words UNPUBLISHED CHANGES (what exactly did change??) the mods aren't even visible in the page history. Fixing such page can sure be cumbersome.

Wouldn't it be an idea to be able to choose the edit mode? To start with: two buttons: Edit and Edit Collaborative. The first button would just use the good old merge strategy - or even just lock the page.

Thanks,
Andre

[Andre Vergison]

Why am I "new here" ??? Because today I logged in with Google?

That's another pain in life, the 37 identities one can have... :)

[Pat D'Ambrosio]

Andre,

Collaborative editing has lots of drawbacks in Confluence:

1. I want to make several comments on a published page whose answers will change the content of the page. Yikes! I enter them on the published page and the responder answers. Now I have to go to open the page in edit mode, where I can no longer see the comments and make changes. Lots of scrolling, closing to see the next comment etc and reopening.

2. One/More users make changes, but I have no way of seeing the actual changes unless I run a doc comparison and yes, then its back to open/close.....

3. A user makes unpublished changes and now my workflow on this page is stopped until I contact the person and see whether these should be published etc.

4. i had a situation where I tried to perform a copy-paste from one page to another, but page 1 in edit mode lost the section and it did not appear in page 2. Reasonably, one would think that you could go and grab that in Doc comparison, but not so. I finally reclaimed my section but it was needlessly time-consuming and frustrating.

Compare the above to Word track changes, MadCap Flare, PDF bring this editing....It would be terrific if Atlassian would run a product comparison and bring these features up-to-date.

Thanks,

Pat

[Andre Vergison]

Yes it has. I stick to my point of view that there should be a choice in the way you edit a page. Here you can see that collaborative editing can be switched on and off however for an entire site only !!!  I like collaborative for certain pages, but not for all. Perhaps it could become a page property.

Thanks,
Andre

[Pat D'Ambrosio]

Andre,

Even with the change you suggest, changes can easily be overwritten and the functionality requires unnecessary work and time compared with other programs.

Thanks,

Pat

[Pat D'Ambrosio]

I haven't fully tested this but: There is a solution on the editing page using the ellipses, but you must close out of the page before you can see the changes that you want to undo in a smaller pop-up that requires you to scroll down. Think Word here, where you can jump from page to page and accept or reject.....

[Pawel Furmanowski]

Hi Seth.

There's no way to discard unpublished changes at the moment. 
The thing I do is to publish your changes and then revert to the previous version ( three dots --> History --> Restore the previous one).

I hope it will work for you as well.

Cheers,

Pawel

[Paul Wade]

There is an easy workaround for this problem although it is NOT ideal and the loss of the ability to remove unpublished changes is a disappointing UX mistake.

If make a copy of the page the new page will not have the unpublished changes, use this to replace the page with unpublished changes. 

[Parva C_ - Bitwelt Software]

Discarding draft is now possible in Confluence Cloud.

1. Edit the page (i.e. open page in edit mode)

2. Click on ... (three dots) on the right top

3. Click 'Revert to last published version'

See the screenshot:

[Ray Dysart]

This works, however, it doesn't apply to embedded Draw.io diagrams it seems :facepalm:

No matter what I do including reverting to a previous version of a page, as soon as I edit an embedded Draw.io diagram I get some random edited version. Viewing the page shows the old version, but every time I try to edit it I get an edited version

[Cosmin Lehene]

"Revert to last published version" - reminds me of https://userinyerface.com/ 

[Thomas]

I clicked on edit by accident, I want to throw that 'edit' away, is that possible?  Click close? does that notify watchers? 

[Davin Studer]

Is your Confluence instance on Cloud or Server/Data Center?

[Rob Stanich]

I did not see an option to get rid of unpublished changes.  I edited a page and then realized that I was editing the wrong page (we have some similar pages in different spaces) and wanted to just discard the changes.  However, Confluence did not let me discard them from the page, and on the DRAFTS page, it was not present.  I did not even see an option to get rid of a draft.

So I just published the changes and then reverted to the prior version.  This reminds me of Microsoft Office having the "auto-save" feature.  I prefer to be able to discard changes if I realize I made edits that I do not like - that is how I used computers all of my life.  I only want it to save when I tell it to save :).

[Deleted user]