Page name conflict - how to find offending page

[Mac McCardle]

We've a team member who is trying to create a page but Confluence believes there's already a page with the same name. We've searched high and low but can't find the offending page.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how we can find this page?

I've checked restricted page, hidden pages, trash and archived pages to avail. During testing I noted that Archived pages cause naming conflicts, I am wondering if the offending page was archived with restrictions that prevent anyone from viewing it, but have no way to confirm this.

Suggestion: When a page name conflict occurs a link / context about the conflicting asset should be provided.

[Kristian Klima]

Hi @Mac McCardle 

I wonder if there's DRAFT of a page created somewhere in the space that has a same name...

Thinking loud... there can be two scenarios:

• a new page draft is created and it lingers somewhere in the tree
• an existing page was edited - the page name was changed - but the page was not published... and it it was deleted/archived so it would appear under its original name.

Other than that, what I can think of is purging the trash to see if the issue persist. Or maybe your org admin can review the archive/trash if you suspect restrictions could be an issue.

[Mac McCardle]

Hey Kristian, great suggestions - during testing we determined that draft pages do not cause a conflict, neither do non-committed name changes. 

I am an org admin, but there are some conditions where even org admins can't surface content due to restrictions. I've reviewed the trash and archive and not found anything so far. I haven't tested to see if it's possible for a restricted & archived page to be unfindable from an org admin perspective, however.

We'll raise this with Atlassian, it seems like something that isn't readily solvable.

Thanks for your input :) 

[Kristian Klima]

@Mac McCardle 

Thanks for the investigation!

Interesting findings indeed. 

[Mac McCardle]

For future users looking for this - we've raised a support request with Atlassian.

• Archived pages do contribute to space key conflicts, but trashed pages do not.
• Once archived, pages do not show in the restricted pages view.
• Restrictions are still applied to archived pages. They cannot be found by org admins. This includes from the space management tools.

Essentially restricted and archived pages end up in a void, especially from a space or org admin perspective. I don't believe there should be a condition where org admins can't surface restricted content. The same applies to space admins.

Our suggestions to Atlassian are:

• Improve the name conflict dialogue to include a link to the page for context / resolution options.
• Improve the archive experience so that administrators can manage content in the space more effectively.
• Ensure that archived page list shows restricted pages.

[Mac McCardle]

Correction to our previous assertion: Archived pages do show up in the restricted pages list - Not sure how I missed that during our testing.

The cause of our problem was established - The pages we couldn't find were child pages of a restricted page. Pages with inherited restrictions are not listed anywhere that I know if. In our case the pages were three layers deep within the restricted page hierarchy and about 80% of the users who used to view that page are no longer members of our organization, so we uncovered a lot of 'lost' content.

Our recommendations remain very similar. I don't think org admins should have to jump through hoops to find things. I'd argue space admins should be able to find restricted content more easily too, although implementing a solution for org admins is probably a lot easier. 

As a result of this ticket, Atlassian referred us to this open JAC: [CONFCLOUD-65817] Better Visualization of Inherited Restrictions as a Space Admin - Create and track feature requests for Atlassian products.

And created this suggestion to give more context when encountering a page name conflict: [CONFCLOUD-79052] Ability for user to get more details about restricted page conflict error - Create and track feature requests for Atlassian products.