How to change the owner / author of a page in Confluence?

[Martin Kneissl]

I'd like to hand over a page to a different user. Probably that's totally simple to do, but I can't find out how...

[Matin Schiemann]

Hi all, 

i created a feature request for this, as we have the same problem: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-41018

Feel free to vote.

Best

Matin

[carrhuntc]

CONF-41018 has been closed as a duplicate of an OPEN ticket in their system

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-7247

[Richard Bate]

Just found an easy way to do this. 

1. Rename the page you want to change the owner of, publish. 
2. Copy that page
3. Rename the copy to match the original name, publish. 
4. Delete the old page. 

[JSzymik]

This is what I was looking for.

[lophat]

WARNING!!! Do not do this if you have images on the pages!  I did this, once I deleted the old pages all the image links are broken and as far as I know have been deleted by deleting the old pages.

[Colton]

I  would think that the warning that @lophat mentioned could be remedied by downloading and saving the images prior to what @Richard Bate listed as step 1. While I realize that this means more work, it's better to have a proper backup to avoid loss of data.

[AlysonA]

Hi Martin,

In order to change the author of a page/blogpost you will need to apply some database manipulation as there's no straightforward method to achieve that currently:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Changing+Usernames

Just be sure to take a database backup and involve your DBA in this process before changing anything.

note: this is still a feature request that is being tracked in http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-4063, feel free to cast your vote there and add yourself as a watcher to receive further updates.

Hope it helps!

[Aaron Oliver]

Correct link for feature request: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-4063

Link in the above has an extra comma in the URL and leads to a page that doesn't exist.

[Intel CHD Jira Admin]

The feature request is not what the question was about. It was about changing the author of a page, not changing the user name of the author.

I suppose this is also impossible...

[RP Administrator]

Here is a recent process I used to transfer page and space ownership so I could delete particular users from Confluence:

Here's the workaround for this. It's not pretty. This must be done as admin and backup of current config is highly recommended.

1. Export space to and xml file:

Go to the parent space and click Browse->Advance -> XML Export

2. Decompress the zip file, open the entities.xml file and go through and change the username information in the CDATA[username] sections of these lines:

<property name="userName"><![CDATA[creator-username]]></property>

<property name="creatorName"><![CDATA[creator-username]]></property>

It's easier to have a local admin account or one particular account to change these to. You can use a editor to Find/Replace the information in bulk. Otherwise use the Find/Replace to update specific users to another specific user.

3. Save the file and re-zip all the content you originally downloaded into a new zip file.

4. Go to Browse -> Confluence Admin -> Backup & Restore

5. Under the Restore Confluence Data click the Choose File button and select the newly zip file. Please read all the information under this section. Make sure the Build Index box is checked, them click the Upload and Restore button.

I got an error during the process regarding the attachments. The error did not prevent the XML file from updating the page creator information.

6. Go to one or more of the pages that you changed the ownership of and click Tools -> Info to verify the ownership change.

7. Empty the space trash to ensure there are no more lingering pages associated with the removed user (Browes -> Space Admin -> Trash)

8. Go to Browse -> Confluence Admin -> Users -> Show all users. Try to remove the desired users.

If the user is the creator of a Space use the following process, in addition to the above steps.

9. Rename the space the user created.

10. Create a new space with the same name as the original space name (the space ID will have to be different).

11. Move the pages (parent pages) from the old space to the new space. Click on the page (parent page) and go to Tools -> Move.

If the space home page is the top level parent page of that space, just move that page and all sub pages will follow intact.

12. Verify the old space is empty and then remove it. Browse -> Space Admin -> Remove Space

13. Go back to Browse -> Confluence Admin -> Users -> Show all users. Try to remove the desired users.

This is what worked for me, feel free to test and pass along to others. Instructions probably needs to be cleaned up a bit.

[Colm Maguire]

I really hope that by now there is an easier way. 

[Rene Krogh]

It is actual possible with the plugin "scriptrunner"

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1215215/scriptrunner-for-confluence?hosting=cloud&tab=overview

I did it yesterday for multible pages at once. The feature is descibed here:

https://scriptrunner.adaptavist.com/latest/confluence/builtin-scripts.html?__hstc=64753776.1bb630f9cde2cb5f07430159d50a3c91.1513036800088.1513036800089.1513036800090.1&__hssc=64753776.1.1513036800091&__hsfp=528229161

[Denise Unterwurzacher [Atlassian]]

Hi all, the way this is done has changed somewhat in recent versions. Please see this page for detailed instructions: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONFKB/How+to+change+the+creator+of+a+page

[carrhuntc]

This is not accurate any longer either as the database schema has changed and the update content set creator = (select user_key from user_mapping where lower_username = '<lowerusername>')

doesn't work as it now uses user_key references instead of the actual username.  Even then I've seen no proof on my system that it actually updates the creator of the page on the ones I've tried.

[Dave Fennell]

I created some confluence projects and then shortly after migrated them to crowd and wanted to change the ownership of the users from the confluence internal to the crowd user.  I didn't really like the idea about messing about with SQL queries (even though I am a developer so quite happy with SQL).  In the end what I did was export the entire space as XML, delete the space.  Then edit the XML (keeping a backup in case you mess this up!) and change the ownership persmissions, the structure is fairly obvious, I had renamed the internal users to have an "_confluence" suffix so I identified those user ids and globally search replaced them with the new user I wanted them to have.  I did this on about 10 spaces and it worked fine.  The only problem was that sometimes I would end up with duplicate "touched" entries if the new user had touched a file that the old one had, my answer to this is simply to delete any "touched" entries which were problematic, and failing that just delete all of them.  I guess I'll lose popular and recently viewed history but that didn't really matter to me.