Delete a parent page AND its child pages?

Yasushi Shiba July 13, 2011

Hi.

I am wishing to be able to remove a page and its child pages in one-go. (I'm using version 3.3.1). Even with the space admin right, this is not possible. So after removing a parent page, I have to go to the page that list orphan pages and remove each child page, which can be quite time consuming.

Does anyone know any short-cut/plug-in that allows deleting a parent and its child pages in a simpler way?

Thank you for your support.

15 answers

1 accepted

58 votes
Answer accepted
Steffen Heller
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April 18, 2012

I use the "Import Word Document" function to delete pages plus their children in one go. For this I create an empty word file, import it and choose the option "Delete existing children of ..."

Here is the step by step instruction:

  • Click "Tools" > "Import Word Document"
  • Choose the (empty) Word file
  • Click "Next"
  • Choose the following options at "Where to import":
  • (x) Replace ... {name of the parent page}
  • [x] Delete existing children of {name of the parent page}
  • Click "import"

After this the system imports the empty Word file and replaces all the unwanted pages with it. This one new and empty page can be erased the usual way:

  • Open page
  • Click "Tools" > "Remove"

Off course you need to be careful with this method because one wrong click and you can easily erase whole spaces!

Deleted user June 26, 2012

I like your lateral thinking :)

Thomas Schlegel
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June 26, 2012
That's tricky :-)

I'm wondering why a simple word import can do things that Atlassian can not bring as a regular function to the surface :-(

Like # people like this
Mick Davidson
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May 2, 2013

Steffen,

thanks, that's brilliant thinking and it worked. :) I got rid of about 50 pages in a few seconds all in one go instead of having a boring and annoying task that would have taken many, many minutes.

This is why I follow Answers! :)

Cheers.

David Chiner April 22, 2014

Thanks Steffen!!!

Joe Cross September 19, 2014

I love that there is a community of users to come up with these workarounds, but I agree with Thomas - sad that Atlassian expects you to be an awesome Google searcher to use their product.

Like Angela Greaves likes this
John Parsons February 27, 2015

@Steffen Heller Thank you sir, you saved us quite a bit of time.

Teresa Hollidge March 25, 2015

Brilliant! I've been waiting for years for a solution. Thank you!

Manoj Kumar May 11, 2015

Great! Its working fine.

Attila Nemeth May 13, 2016

This add on is helpful to delete child pages with permission:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.elitesoftsp.confluence.page.tree.utility.plugins/server/overview

If you need to delete attachment or comment on the page, you can use this add on: 

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.elitesoftsp.confluence.page.utility.plugins/server/overview

EPS Software Engineering AG
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May 16, 2016

As Steffen mentioned, is his approach not without problems. Our add-on provides the necessary security and is extremely easy to use. We have customers with 10’000 User based license.

Marketplace link: Page Tree Eraser

Nagu Chinnakaveti November 17, 2017

Life saver, thanks a lot Steffen. 

Robbie Robinson November 27, 2017

Great tip Steffan.

Big reorg and had a couple of hundred pages to get rid of.

Worked perfectly

Andreas Bossard December 18, 2017

If you don't want to workaround in the future, you can vote for a feature request here https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-5974

Joris De Dobbelaere March 20, 2018

Best work-around ever :)

Martin Boehme
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May 26, 2020

Works on Server, Data Center and Cloud :)

Like Kfir Wolfson likes this
Kfir Wolfson November 30, 2020

Thanks, great workaround for this missing functionality!

7 votes
HuseinA
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July 13, 2011

A quick workaround would be to move the parent page to a temporary Space which will move the child pages along with it. Then remove the temporary Space.

A quick search in PAC led to these awesome plugins:

Yasushi Shiba July 13, 2011

Thank you very much for your answer, Hussein. The third possibility seems to be the best. Thanks again.

Martin Cooper
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June 25, 2012

Apologies for blatant plug but just to keep list upto date heres another Free plugin:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/treesurgeon

HuseinA
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June 26, 2012

Thanks @Martin. I've added it in the list.

3 votes
Anne EQS
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February 2, 2015

Deleting a page incl. it's subpages is such a fundamental function - why this isn't part of the confluence functions?
Deleting dozens of pages manually OR installling a paid add-on OR using some creative workaround - really???

2 votes
Paul DeSousa
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November 6, 2014

To resolve this for my user base, I created a page called "orphaned pages" in each space.  I then took all the orphaned pages under Space Tools -> Reorder Pages and and moved them to the orphaned pages.  Then I gave each space admin one week to go through and make sure they do not want to keep any of it.    After that, I moved each "orphaned pages" to a new space called orphaned and deleted that space.  Kind of a pain, but it worked without too much overhead.

Paul DeSousa
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November 7, 2014

The work around we are going to use is to create a space called Trash and then people should just move pages with lots of children to Trash. From there I will simply delete the space each week, and re add it.

EPS Software Engineering AG
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May 16, 2016

We implemented exactly this functionality in our Add-on, expect that in your case the Page Title could be a problem. It has to be unique in the trash space. We add the date, time and user to the page title. Like that all page titles are unique and you could restore the pages with our Page Tree Creator Add-on.

Marketplace link: Page Tree Earser

1 vote
Anais Victor May 13, 2016

This add on is helpful to delete child pages with permission:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.elitesoftsp.confluence.page.tree.utility.plugins/server/overview

If you need to delete attachment or comment on the page, you can use this add on: 

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.elitesoftsp.confluence.page.utility.plugins/server/overview

 

1 vote
Stephan Sutter January 15, 2016

Hi,

Check out our plugin. It is simple and save to use.

No calls, no tickets, no backup restores. That's your new life. Thanks to the  "Undo Time" and the additional "Page Tree Deletion" permission you can optimize the usability and the security.

Marketplace Link: Page Tree Eraser

Regards,
Stephan

1 vote
BroadcomS April 19, 2012

WebDAV interface also works well for this.

Peter Andersen June 29, 2016

I agree - using e.g. CyberDuck as a webdav client allows instantaneous deletion of a page full hierarchy.

0 votes
Stephen Deutsch
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May 18, 2017
0 votes
Seb Kouba July 13, 2015

I think I'll set up a Space called "Deleted Pages" and tell people to move pages there. That way they don't need the permissions to create a space and get rid of the documents. If need be they can restrict the page to themselves. An admin can then periodically clear the space if necessary.

0 votes
Lukas Knoch -Rumpelcoders-
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March 27, 2015

Hi , the plugin is not free but not expensive and supports latest confluence version: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/at.rumpelcoder.confluence.deletepagetree Please give feedback, we are willing to implement user requested features.

0 votes
DebbieR May 8, 2014

Absolutely none of the recommended plug-ins seem to be available. They've been archived or I can't find them when searching Add-Ons? Is there no free plug-in out there to do this? Thanks

0 votes
Michael Brinson February 20, 2013

Any kind of hint as to how we should go about using tree surgeon?

I installed it, but can't find anywhere how I actually can use it now.

0 votes
Chitra Patil October 2, 2012

Sadly, none of the plugins work--I have been trying to remove pages in theme documentation. It doesn't work. Even the Word import failed.

Deleted user February 20, 2013

@chitp - sorry for the extremely late reply (and feel free to kick me if this is a stupid comment), but if NONE of the options work for you, then I'm wondering if you've got 'remove' permission in the space? Nothing will work if you're not allowed to remove pages.

0 votes
MitchellM October 26, 2011

There is a plugin (I've not tried) that removes a page and its child pages. See the Delete Page and Sub Pages plugin at https://plugins.atlassian.com/plugin/details/70969.

If you try this plugin, post back here about your experiences. Love to hear how it goes.

0 votes
Alexander Ewert July 13, 2011

Check plugin [Confluence Delete Page and Subpages|https://plugins.atlassian.com/plugin/details/70969]

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