We’ve all been there—a space cluttered with outdated, irrelevant, or redundant content. It’s time for a cleanup, but there are a lot of things to consider here. Should you delete those Confluence pages forever, archive them, or simply update and better organize them?
Understanding the differences between deleting and archiving can significantly streamline your space, enhance navigation, and make life easier for your teams.
In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of each option, what happens when you choose one over the other, and how to make informed decisions.
Why Consider Delete or Archive Confluence Pages?
On a broad level, both deleting and archiving serve the same purpose: Properly organize your Confluence space. Let’s check the common benefits associated with each option.
1. Save Valuable Time: First, we have the obvious. A well-organized Confluence space simply enhances efficiency. Your teams won’t have to spend significant time locating information and walking through duplicated or outdated content. Instead, they can spend their time on more productive tasks.
2. Reduce Noise: The tree navigation in Confluence is a great tool to facilitate navigation. But more often than not, that tree can include tens if not hundreds of pages, most of which are outdated. This is not ideal. Irrelevant or outdated pages can distract and overwhelm users, burying essential information. By deleting or archiving, you minimize this noise, making crucial content more accessible.
3. Properly Organize Content: You can afford to leave outdated Confluence pages within your space if you don’t have too much content. But as your space grows, you need a more streamlined content governance approach. A systematic approach to cleaning up your Confluence space helps maintain its manageability and sustainability.
Deleting Confluence Pages & Content Items
When to Delete Confluence Pages
I don’t know about you, but I often avoid deleting pages even though I know I should- maybe because of the permanent nature of the action itself. Deleting pages is a more decisive action, appropriate when content no longer serves any purpose. Consider deleting pages in the following cases:
- Irrelevant Content: Think of old meeting notes, outdated drafts, or projects that never saw the light of day. This type of content serves no purpose whatsoever. Keeping it creates confusion and might lead some uninformed users to dive into it, completely wasting their time.
- Duplicated Information: Ever found yourself looking for a specific piece of content, only to find a couple of versions that deal with the same problem? This is the case especially with troubleshooting articles where, for example, dev people and support agents worked on the same issue. If there are multiple versions of the same content or if a page has been superseded by a more recent one, delete the outdated versions.
- Compliance or Confidentiality: Crucial documents such as company policies, or classified information to be outdated. You should think of permanently deleting them to avoid miscommunication, meet legal, compliance, or confidentiality requirements.
How to Delete a Page in Confluence
Deleting a single or multiple Confluence pages is more or less a straightforward process. Always remember that you need the right permissions to be able to delete Confluence pages.
- Navigate to the page you want to delete or locate within the page tree
- Click the ellipsis (…)
- Select “Delete” from the dropdown menu.
- Confirm the action within the dialog box. Here of course, you can either “Move to Trash”, “Cancel”, or “Archive” (more on this later)
Pro Tip: When you’re deleting a page that has nested items you can delete or keep them. If you decide on the latter, you should always check out the inherited permissions as you might not want those pages to remain visible.
What Happens When You Delete a Confluence Page
When you delete a published page:
The page is moved to the space’s trash, where it remains until manually purged by users, who of course, have the right to do so. You can restore it unless it’s permanently deleted from the trash.
When you delete a draft:
As for draft pages, on the other hand, they’re permanently deleted and can’t be restored.
When you delete a page with children items:
In this case, those child pages are moved up to the next available parent page in the hierarchy. If you want to ensure these child pages remain under a specific parent, it’s best to manually move them before deleting the parent page. This helps maintain the intended structure of your content and prevents orphaning of child pages.
For more details, check this detailed Atlassian Support article.
Archiving Confluence Pages
When to Archive Pages
As mentioned above, archiving pages is my go to option since it might appear safer. Archiving is suitable for content that you may want to revisit for future reference but doesn’t need to be immediately visible. This is when you might consider archiving:
- Historical Reference: Sometimes we might need to go back to outdated content for reference. Think of old kick off meeting notes, project plans, etc. Having them archived makes it easier to access them at any time while avoiding cluttering your space.
- Low Priority: Pages with content that’s not actively used but still important, like older training materials, procedures, are best archived. Some opt for specific content statutes to specify the priority level such as “Low Priority” instead. But in most cases, having them archived is the more suitable option.
- Seasonal or Rotating Content: If you have content that is only relevant at certain times of the year, such as specific events, campaign data, you might store them within parent pages, or simply archive them. The latter is commonly used to maintain a clean workspace while preserving the data for future use.
How to Archive a Page in Confluence
- Navigate to the page you want to archive.
- Move the page to an “Archive” space or a dedicated archive section within your existing space.
- Ensure that the archived page is not linked from the main navigation or search results unless explicitly needed.
Pro Tip: Upon archiving, you should always remember to leave a note explaining the action and when it’s suitable to restore the page or delete permanently if needed.
What Happens When You Archive a Confluence Page
- Content is hidden: The page is removed from your space’s content tree and stored in the archive, but it’s not deleted. To visit your archived content, select “Space Settings”, and then “Archived Pages”. There you can have a view of all your space archived pages and you can restore or delete them, and add a note.
- Excluded from search and analytics: Archived pages won’t show up in quick searches or analytics, although they can still be found using Confluence advanced search.
- Links still work: Links to the page remain active, with an “Archived” badge next to them, so people can still access the content if needed.
- Limited actions: Archived pages can’t be edited, commented on, or liked. To make any changes, you’ll need to restore the page from the archive.
For more details, check this detailed Atlassian support article.
How to Decide Between Deleting or Archiving?
Should I delete or archive a Confluence page? This is the most important question, and as I mentioned, there are a lot of things to consider. When you’re having a hard time deciding which option is best, ask yourself these two questions:
- Will anyone need to reference this in the future? If yes, archiving is preferable. If not, simply permanently delete the content.
- Does this page still hold any value or purpose? If the content is outdated but still potentially useful, archive it. If it’s no longer relevant or necessary, consider deleting it.
- Is this page linked to other pages or resources? If it’s integral to ongoing projects or referenced frequently internally or externally, archiving might be better.
When Neither Option Works: Rely on Content Statuses
Sometimes, deleting or archiving isn’t the best move. Generally speaking, we always opt for either option to clean up and organize our spaces and you have other ways to do that: Use content statutes.
Confluence is equipped with native statutes that can be associated with each page. Confluence lets you label pages as “ Rough Draft, “In Progress,” “Ready for Review,” or “Verified”, giving your team clear signals about the content’s state without moving or deleting the page. Of course, you have complete control over these content statutes by accessing the space settings. Although quite convenient and easy to implement and manage, native Confluence statues lack one fundamental feature: A holistic dashboard.
For this, you might want to consider third party apps on Atlassian Marketplace such as our very own Content Status for Confluence. The app is designed to help you create custom content statues and associate with your Confluence pages. Not only that, but you can view all of your tagged pages within one centralized dashboard where you can classify your content by various criteria including, of course, the status, creator, creation date, and more.
Check out this article to learn more about content status best practices in Confluence.
By carefully considering when to delete or archive Confluence pages, you can maintain a streamlined, efficient workspace that supports your team’s needs and future growth.
