Unable to access any restricted pages as administrator

Symptoms

1. Admins are unable to access any restricted pages as administrators.

2. The checkboxes for Personal Space, Create Space(s), Confluence Administrator, System Administrator are greyed out and can't be clicked.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Ensure there is more than one group with System Administrator permissions

   1. Go to ⚙ > User Management > Groups

   2. Create a new group confluence-system-administrators

   3. Click Add Members and add yourself

   4. Go to Global Permissions

   5. Click Edit Permissions

   6. Enter confluence-system-administrators to _Grant browse permission to_ and click Add

2. Check all checkboxes Personal Space, Create Space(s), Confluence Administrator, System Administrator

3. Click Save All at the bottom

4. Go to ⚙ > User Management > Groups

5. Click Delete next to confluence-administrators

6. Click Confirm

Cause

The checkboxes are not changeable becauseconfluence-administrators is a super-super user group and it has been deleted. Thus, the group should not be deletable. This is a bug in Confluence: CONFSERVER-53448 - Group confluence-administrators Should Not Be Deletable

It may be that an administrator deleted and re-added this group under a different name, such as administrators, granting them all the system administrator privileges. However, this group will never actually have all the rights as the confluence-administrators group and it must have this exact name.

Resolution

Add back the confluence-administrators group, with all Global Permissions.

1. Create a new group called confluence-administrators

2. Add all Global Permissions to this group

3. Add yourself to this group

4. Attempt to view the restricted pages or spaces

5. If it still doesn't work, go back to Admin > View Default Space Permissions and click on Recover Permissions

6. Browse to the space or page again