How do I discard unpublished changes?

Seth WylieApr 20, 2017

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.
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11 answers
10votes

Bruno Miretti Apr 21, 2017 • edited

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 Apr 21, 2017
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.
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Sharon Morgan May 02, 2017

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.
Like

Mike Leibensperger May 05, 2017

+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 Like Seth, my unpublished changes do not appear on the drafts page.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?

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Barbara Snyder May 08, 2017
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unpublished edits" would do the job.
Like • 1 person likes this

Dan Nelson May 10, 2017

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

Abhay Patil Jun 19, 2017

Me too. Unpublished changes have to appear in "drafts" for the user to have the choice of discarding
or accepting it.
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Sunny Wong Apr 17, 2018
Is there a solution to this? How to undo unwanted draft?
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Niklas Kaustinen Jul 04, 2018

+1 on the hating this new feature.
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Bruno Miretti Jul 04, 2018

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

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3votes
Andras Racz Jun 27, 2017
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 Jul 26, 2017

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).
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3votes

Christian Adam Jan 11, 2018 • edited

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 Jan 11, 2018
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
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Christian Adam Jan 11, 2018

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 -
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Davin Studer COMMUNITY LEADER Jan 11, 2018

Yeah, the server version doesn't have that yet.
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3votes

Andre Vergison Jan 12, 2018

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 COMMUNITY LEADER Jan 12, 2018
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.

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Andre Vergison Apr 17, 2018

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
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Davin Studer COMMUNITY LEADER Apr 18, 2018

When my answer was published the cloud offering did not have it. I'm not sure if it has it now.
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2votes

Davin Studer COMMUNITY LEADER May 08, 2017

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 May 15, 2017

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.
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Kristen Swick Dec 13, 2017
This worked for me! I added a space, hit close, and it prompted me to discard all changes. Thank you!
Like

Davin Studer COMMUNITY LEADER Dec 14, 2017

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.
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Kristen Swick Dec 14, 2017

Agreed!
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Andre Vergison Dec 29, 2017 • edited

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)
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Andre Vergison Dec 29, 2017

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?
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Andre Vergison Apr 17, 2018

Nobody at Atlassian knows the answer?
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1vote

Pawel Furmanowski May 25, 2017

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
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1vote

Abhay Patil Jan 12, 2018 • edited

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 COMMUNITY LEADER Jan 12, 2018

Yeah, the ellipsis menu has not made it to the server version.
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1vote
Andre Vergison Apr 18, 2018 • edited
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 Apr 18, 2018 • edited

Why am I "new here" ??? Because today I logged in with Google?
That's another pain in life, the 37 identities one can have... :)
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Pat D'Ambrosio Jun 21, 2018

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
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Andre Vergison Jun 21, 2018
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
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Pat D'Ambrosio Jun 21, 2018

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
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Pat D'Ambrosio Jul 07, 2018
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.....
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1vote

Nikhil Kulkarni I'M NEW HERE Mar 29, 2019

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.
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0votes
Jesse Todd Apr 12, 2019

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0votes

Jesse Todd Friday

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