Unable to import XML space to Confluence Server exported earlier from Cloud

[Unknown User]

I am trying to import XML Confluence spaces from my cloud Confluence account into my on-prem Confluence server.

I get the following message after 20% of importing progress (I changed my e-mail address with the dummy address)

Import failed. Check your server logs for more information. com.atlassian.confluence.importexport.ImportExportException: Unable to complete import because the data does not match the constraints in the Confluence schema. Cause: MySQLIntegrityConstraintViolationException: Duplicate entry 'user.name@gmail.com' for key 'unq_lwr_username'

After that the importing stops. I was looking for a solution in the Community articles but I could not find anything to solve my problem. Why is this happening in the first place? Shouldn't it be a simple and tested by Atlassian data migration process?

My Confluence Server version is 7.3.1

[Shannon S · Accepted solution]

Hello Bogdan,

Thank you for reporting this. You mentioned you had looked for a solution in the articles, but you weren't able to find anything. Have you had a look at this article yet?

• Confluence site XML import fails with "duplicate key" error 

The error is the same, and there is a solution for you on that page. Could you tell me if you have done that already?

Thank you!

Shannon

[Bogdan Gorka]

The page that you have mentioned did not help me as such but it directed me where I should start experimenting. After looking for a solution I found the one that worked for me.

I unpacked the space export ZIP file and looked through the entities.xml file for the duplicate entry which caused the trouble . So, I looked for the 'user.name@gmail.com' which caused the problem and simply renamed it to user.name2@gmail.com. After editing the XML file, I zipped it back. There was no such user in my Confluence instance so the import was accepted. 

The problem that some people may have with this solution is that all imported pages have corrupted data about authors. In my case it is:

Created by Unknown User (5c2f5bc58a78885a3c19debf), last modified by Unknown User (user.name2@gmail.com)

Anyway, I am happy that I could get out of the Confluence Cloud server with my content before the expiry date. For some reason, it is easy to migrate content from Server to Confluence Cloud with the Migration Assistant but, as you can see, it is not so easy to go back.

[Shannon S]

Hi Bogdan,

Glad to hear you've at least gotten further along!

Could you see if you can create the user user.name2@gmail.com and then disable it, per the following article:

• How To Rename the User: "Unknown User" as the Content Creator Caused by User Deletion 

Let me know how that goes.

Shannon

[Bogdan Gorka]

I did that and it worked indeed. Thank you!

[Shannon S]

Excellent! Thank you for confirming.

Take care, and have a pleasant week.

Shannon