Cannot move page to different space due to error : The page '' already exists in space
Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Summary
While moving a page to a different space the below error is encountered :
The page '' already exists in space
The important thing to be noted here is that the error does not mention any page name but mentions about a blank page '' that already exists in the target space which does not let you move the page.
While we already have a KB article : The error "a page with this name already exists in this space" displays when renaming a page title, but this talks about the issue where the error has the specific page name which stops a user from moving a page to another space.
The issue discussed below does not tell us about any page name and just gives the error : The page '' already exists in space
Environment
Confluence DC
Diagnosis
To further check this, run below query in your database server to check if there are any pages with blank title in the target space :
1
SELECT * FROM content where title = '' and spaceid = (select spaceid from spaces s where spacekey = '<Your_space_key>');NOTE
Please note the above query is for PostgreSQL. Please modify the query if needed as per your database server.
It is also worth noting that the issue is not caused if title of pages in confluence has 'NULL' values. It is the empty '' string that can cause such issues and due to these empty titles it can be hard to find the root cause of the issue from the UI.
Cause
The issue seems to be coming due to an open bug that allows Confluence to save empty draft pages :
Due to this bug, Confluence saves draft pages with empty titles, and this can be seen from the content table as well. For such pages, in the content table, the title of such page will be empty, i.e., ''.
Solution
If the above query returns any output, then to resolve the issue, please change the title of those pages such that they don't have a blank title anymore.
After that, try to move the page to the target space and it should not cause any issue.
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