How can I stop Confluence from crashing when viewing an Excel file?
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
Confluence can sometimes have trouble rendering certain Excel files. The effects can range from the page being slow to load, not render at all, or for the entire site to become unresponsive and need to be rebooted.
You'll generally see entries like this in either the catalina.out or atlassian-confluence.log:
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at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
UIDefaults.getUI() failed: no ComponentUI class for: com.jxcell.HB[,0,0,0x0,invalid,alignmentX=0.0,alignmentY=0.0,border=,flags=4194304,maximumSize=,minimumSize=,preferredSize=,blockIncrement=10,orientation=VERTICAL,unitIncrement=1] java.lang.Error
at javax.swing.UIDefaults.getUIError(Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.MultiUIDefaults.getUIError(Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.UIDefaults.getUI(Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.UIManager.getUI(Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.JScrollBar.updateUI(Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.JScrollBar.<init>(Unknown Source)
at javax.swing.JScrollBar.<init>(Unknown Source)
at com.jxcell.HB.<init>(EYFN)
at com.jxcell.Adapter_2_0.createScrollbar(EYFN)
at com.jxcell.mvc.Viewview.<init>(EYFN)
at com.jxcell.ssView.<init>(EYFN)
at com.jxcell.View.append(EYFN)
at com.jxcell.View.<init>(EYFN)
at com.jxcell.View.<init>(EYFN)
at com.benryan.conversion.SpreadsheetConverter.convert(SpreadsheetConverter.java:476)
at com.benryan.conversion.XlsConverter$1.doConversion(XlsConverter.java:45)
at com.benryan.conversion.DocConverter.execute(DocConverter.java:61)
at com.benryan.conversion.macro.ConverterMacro.execute(ConverterMacro.java:250)Solution
While later versions of the Office Connector do make improvements, occasionally a file can still cause problems.
There's a few potential causes relating to Excel file content:
Specific cell formatting
Merged cells
Too many sheets/empty cells
A good test is to try restricting the sheet and columns/rows that are displayed. If this doesn't help, try saving the format as .xls rather than .xlsx file; .xlsx files use a lot more system resources than standard .xls files and often this will resolve the problem. In later versions of Confluence, .xlsx files are restricted to 2mb.
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