Frequently asked questions

What does Tidy Find & Replace change?

The text of pages and blog posts: paragraphs, headings, lists, tables, panels, quotes, expands, task and decision items, layouts, media captions, and the body text of macros that hold text, such as the table in a Page Properties macro. Page titles, link addresses (the URLs of links and smart links) and code change only when you tick them under Also change.

What does it never change?

Comments and inline comments, macro settings (parameters), status labels, dates, mentions, emoji, expand titles, placeholder text, image descriptions, templates, attachment names, content properties (page metadata), and the content Confluence keeps in its legacy content macro for pages from the old editor. Matches in some of these places are counted in the preview, so you are not surprised. Formatting, macros, inline comments, layouts and media stay as they were.

Does it find text that Confluence search misses, such as part of an address?

Yes. The app reads every page in the place you chose and finds the matches itself. It uses Confluence search only to count the pages, to apply your filters (label, title words, advanced CQL), in the space and page pickers, and to show current titles.

Can I see the changes before anything happens?

Yes. The preview lists every page with matches; open any page to see each match with the text now and after the change. Untick a page or a single match to leave it out. Nothing changes until you start the job.

Can I undo a job?

Yes, from Activity, with a preview first. A page whose latest version is still the job's own save gets its earlier version back. A page edited since is reversed only when that is safe (for example, a job of one plain-text pair that is not a deletion), and only the number of copies of the replacement is checked; otherwise it is listed for you to fix by hand. An undo cannot itself be undone.

Will the watchers of a page be notified?

Confluence may tell the watchers of each changed page about the change, by e-mail or in its daily digest, depending on their notification settings. The app cannot switch this off. The preview says how many pages will change.

What happens to a page someone is editing?

A page with unpublished changes is skipped, because saving it would lose that person's typing. The report lists it with its reason. This includes someone who took a job's change back by hand and left it unpublished: the app tells their draft from Confluence's own lagging copy by when it was written.

Who can use it?

Confluence admins, from Confluence administration (the whole site, chosen spaces, one space, a page tree or one page); space admins, from space settings (their space); and anyone who can edit a page, from the page's ••• menu (that page and the pages below it). A Confluence admin can turn the space and page-menu entries off in the Settings tab. Everything runs with the person's own Confluence permissions: pages they can't edit are skipped.

Does it work on blog posts and personal spaces?

Blog posts: yes, for the whole site, chosen spaces or one space (a page tree holds pages only). Personal spaces: only when you tick "Include personal spaces" for the whole site, or choose one.

Can I replace many things at once?

Yes. Paste up to 100 pairs, one per line, the text to find, a tab, then the replacement: two columns from a spreadsheet work.

Which regular expressions does it support?

RE2 syntax, whose engine never backtracks, so no pattern can hang a job (a page whose matches take too long to find is skipped): no look-around and no back-references; \d, \w, \s and \b match ASCII characters only; groups go into the replacement as $1 or ${name}. The user guide's section "Regular expressions" has the details.

Why does my job say it continues at a certain time?

Confluence gives each app an hourly allowance of API calls, shared by every customer of the app. When it is used up, the job waits until the time Confluence gives, keeps its place, and carries on by itself if its page stays open; otherwise you resume it later from Activity.

Do I have to keep the page open?

Yes: the open page runs the job. If you close it, the job stops where it is, and you resume it from Activity. No page is changed twice.

What are the limits?

Up to 100 pairs a job, 10,000 pages changed and 50,000 pages read per job, and 10,000 matches per page; pages larger than 4.5 MB are skipped. Job history is kept for 90 days, up to the newest 500 jobs.

Does the page history show that an app made the change?

Each changed page gets one new version, made by the person who ran the job, with the message "Tidy Find & Replace job" and the job's ID. Confluence shows no "via app" label. Older versions still hold the old text, which matters if you are removing a secret.

What if Confluence saves something other than the replacement?

After each save the app reads the page back and compares it. If anything else changed, other than the equivalent link forms Confluence writes itself (the user guide names them), it puts the previous version back and says so in the report.

Where is my data stored? Does anything leave Atlassian?

Everything is in Atlassian's Forge storage for your site (Runs on Atlassian): the app has no servers of its own and makes no calls outside Atlassian. It never stores page content, titles or excerpts. The privacy policy lists what it keeps and for how long.

Can I ask Rovo to do it?

On sites with Rovo, yes: ask the Tidy Find & Replace agent "Replace Acme with Globex in this space, preview first" or "Find pages still linking to our old server". It plans a find and replace in one space and gives you the link to its preview, or returns the migration scan's counts and a link; it never changes a page itself. Texts match literally. Confluence admins can use it in any space, and space admins in their own spaces. The user guide's section "Ask Rovo" has the details.

How do I get help?

Email support@prosoftwares.dev. We answer within 24 hours, every day. The support policy has the details.

What is the free migration scan?

After a move from Confluence Server or Data Center, it reads your site, chosen spaces or a space and counts the links that still point at your old Confluence server, by pattern, with the pages that hold them. You confirm which hosts were the old server. It changes nothing.

Which old links can it fix?

Links to pages and blog posts by title, and to a space's home page by its key (/display/…), when exactly one page of that title, letter case aside, is in the space the address names on Cloud (for a blog post, on the date in its address), and every link on a host that was only renamed. Links by page ID, tiny links and attachment links are reported, not fixed: Cloud gives no map from old page IDs to new ones. Each fix runs like any job: preview first, then a report and undo.