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What is a draft?

A draft is a 'snapshot' of unsaved page content, which Confluence creates automatically at regular intervals while you are editing a page or blog post. This is a useful feature that minimises loss of work if your Confluence site experiences a problem, since you can retrieve the unsaved page content from your last saved draft.

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How are drafts implemented in Confluence?

At regular intervals, Confluence automatically saves a draft of the page you are editing. If a network failure or system error prevents you from saving your page, you can retrieve its last saved draft and continue working on the page from (or almost from) where you left off.

  • Drafts are created while you are adding and editing a page or blog post. Each new draft saved replaces the previously saved draft.

    Each time Confluence saves a draft, it displays a message and the time of the last save near the 'Save' button on the edit screen.


    Screenshot: Message displaying the time when the draft was last saved

    Whenever you edit a page and click one of the other page tabs, Confluence will automatically save a draft. When you click on the 'Edit' tab again, Confluence will let you know that a version of the page you are editing was not saved and will give you the option to resume editing it.

Drafts Possess the Following Characteristics

  • A user only has access to the drafts of pages they have been working on and whose content has not yet been saved.
  • A user cannot create a draft explicitly.

Viewing Unsaved Changes

While editing a page or blog post, you can view any 'unsaved' changes you have made since the last automatically saved draft, by clicking the 'view change' link (near the 'Save' button).

Upon clicking the 'view changes' link, the 'unpublished changes' window appears, showing any page content changes that have not yet been saved. Click the 'Close' button in this window to continue editing the page.


Screenshot: Segment of the Unpublished Changes Window

Related Topics

Viewing Drafts
Resuming the Editing of a Draft
Configuring the Time Interval at which Drafts are Saved
Concurrent Editing and Merging Changes

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