Confluence times out when trying to export a page to PDF

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

You are unable to export pages to PDF. After selecting the option "Export to PDF", Confluence keeps waiting for several minutes until a timeout occurs.

Environment

  • Confluence 6.15.X

  • No proxy configured between the browser and Confluence.

Diagnosis

By default, there is no log information regarding the "Export to PDF" action in atlassian-confluence.log.

However, a short time after the export attempt, it's possible to see logs from the Java Garbage Collector:

1 2020-01-28 09:29:36,830 WARN [alert-dispatch:thread-1] [atlassian-monitor] log 2020-01-28T11:29:36.829Z Component 'Java' alerted 'Garbage Collection exceeded time limit' (details: {"durationInMillis":3798,"windowInMillis":20000,"limitPercent":10,"threadMemoryAllocations":"","threadDump":[]}, trigger: {"pluginKey": "not-detected"})

Cause

Confluence wasn't able to export the selected page to PDF because it's running out of memory.

Solution

Check if your Confluence instance is correctly sized, considering the Server Hardware Requirements Guide.

Try increasing the available heap memory for your Confluence instance.

Related content

If an outbound proxy is used to access Confluence, you may refer to PDF Export Taking Too Long to Generate.

Updated on March 10, 2025

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