Collation Conflict During Page Creation When Using MS SQL Server Database

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

Problem

  1. After an upgrade or database migration, when creating a page and clicking the Save button, the page is lost.

  2. Another symptom might be that you're able to create a new page, but cannot edit and save existing pages.

  3. The database in use is Microsoft SQL Server.

The following appears in the atlassian-confluence.log:

1 2 2012-05-01 19:53:49,934 ERROR [TP-Processor5] [sf.hibernate.util.JDBCExceptionReporter] logExceptions Cannot resolve the collation conflict between "SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS" and "SQL_Latin1_General_CP850_BIN" in the equal to operation. -- referer: http://localhost:8080/pages/docreatepage.action | url: /pages/docreatepage.action | userName: admin | action: docreatepage

Diagnosis

Run the following query against your old database. If it returns any results, you must adjust the collation before upgrading to newer versions of Confluence.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 SELECT object_name(object_id) as TableName, name as ColumnName, collation_name FROM sys.columns WHERE collation_name <> 'SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS' AND object_name(object_id) NOT LIKE 'sys%' AND object_name(object_id) NOT LIKE 'queue%' AND object_name(object_id) NOT LIKE 'file%' AND object_name(object_id) NOT LIKE 'spt%' AND object_name(object_id) NOT LIKE 'MSrep%'

Cause

This issue is caused by a conflict between the collation of some table columns.

Solution

Resolution

There are several solutions:

Make sure to backup your Confluence database before trying any of those methods.

  1. Follow the steps on the "How to fix the collation of a MSSQL Confluence Database"

  2. Export an xml backup and import it into a new instance of the same version of Confluence, which has the correct collation settings as described in this article. This solution may not work for larger instances.

  3. Use the Collation Changer Tool. Note that this is a third party tool and not supported by Atlassian. Use at your own risk.

  4. Your DB admin may be able to fix your database using a data migration tool.

  5. Contact an Atlassian Expert who can give you hands on assistance.

Updated on April 8, 2025

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