User doesn't have access to his own page

[Anita Hütter]

An user uploaded a page with links to restricted pages and didn' get access again to his own page.

By testing with a global user we saw the links to the restricted pages. Is it possible that this links are the reason that all common user are closed out (incl the owner)? If the answer is no- what else could it be?  The global user could load the page.

[WW · Accepted solution]

Confluence permissions are pretty hard to figure out at first, but they basically boil down to this:

1. User must have a Confluence license
2. User must be logged in to Confluence
3. User must have space permissions (at least to view pages)
4. User must be included in the page restrictions (if there are any) at least to view, regardless of if he's the one that created the page or not.

If you want to add the user to the page restrictions:

Either the person who restricted the page (if known) or the space admin can add the user to the page.

If it's not known who restricted the page's access, the space admin must go into Space Tools -> Permissions -> Restricted Pages to see who has restrictions on the page.  The space admin can remove the page restrictions by clicking on the lock icon under Operations.

In your case specifically:

I'm not sure what you mean by "uploaded a page with links."  Do you mean created a page that had hyperlinks in it?  Do you mean imported a Word doc as a Confluence page?  Not that it would really matter, though, unless you meant something else.

The only way to limit access to a page is by the 4 items I mentioned above.

If you really want to know how the page got restricted, ask the Confluence admin to look at the Audit log to see who did it.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

No, the links don't affect access.  

You'll need to get someone who can see the page to look at the restrictions to see (and change) who is allowed to view and edit the page.

[Anita Hütter]

He has access to the space- he himself uploaded this page and his page has no restrictions.

The second fact is that I also cannot load this page but if I use the global user it is possible to load it.

I would be thankful about any suggestions.

[Anita Hütter]

Another fact is: it runs into a timeout- it doesn't show restrictions with my account ( with the global user it loads within some sec)

[WW]

Can the user get to other pages in the same space?

It doesn't matter if someone has access to a space, created a page in the past, or restricted a page in the past.  See my original list of 4 criteria.  If the user doesn't still have 1 and/or 2, then it doesn't matter if they're a space admin or ready-only.  They won't be able to access anything that's not available to anonymous users.

Confluence admins (what you're calling the global user) can see just about everything, so that only means that the page still exists and is restricted, which is what we already knew.

Please be sure to read the part I wrote after the list of 4 items.  That tells you how to fix the problem and figure out who restricted the page.

[Anita Hütter]

Yes he can- he is working with that space!

The page is not restricted- I had a look about a million times

[Anita Hütter]

I also can work with that space and cannot open that page! And with the Confluence admin I can see that the page has no restrictions!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

What do you mean by "cannot open that page"?  Error message?  Blankness?

[Anita Hütter]

Today I logged in with the confluence admin user and restricted the page and opened the restriction again.

After I saw today the first time a different errormessage when trying to open the page with my account:

rendering this content exceeded the timeout of 120 seconds

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, so that will have updated the page for restrictions.  A timeout is a different matter.  It's likely that you have too much content on the page for it to render fast enough.  This can be due to permission checks on included, excerpted or external data that is being drawn into the page.

[WW]

Are you getting the timeout when logged in as a Confluence admin?

If so, then, there's something wrong with the page.

If it's loading fine as an admin but not as a regular user, then that's another story.

If the page loads ok as an admin, which you mentioned it did, and if you have Source Editor, from View mode, click the ... menu, click View Storage Format.  Copy what comes up in that page.

Then create a new, blank page with a title, and Publish it.  Edit that new page, use Source Editor to paste in what you copied.  Apply.  Update the page.

If it loads fine, then something went screwy with the first page.  If it has the same problem as the old page (and none of your other pages are having this problem, which it sounds like), then there's a problem with something in the content.

I think something is just wrong with that page (Confluence can misbehave at times), and it's best to recreate it by copying the Storage Format to a new page.

[Anita Hütter]

Thank you guys for your support! It helped a lot and I could close the issue.