When saving updates to a page, Confluence displays: "There was an error processing the request." message

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

This error occurs when Confluence is unable to convert content within the page editor into the format stored in the database.

Diagnosis

While Confluence will display a "There was an error processing the request." message in the UI, the application logs will contain an error like the following:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 2020-07-02 10:36:17,875 WARN [http-nio-8090-exec-41] [confluence.tinymceplugin.rest.DraftsResource] save The supplied editor content could not be converted to storage format. -- referer: https://wonderwiki.com/pages/resumedraft.action?draftId=155911470&draftShareId=9ab03531-1365-47f3-81cb-6c3706cc01f0 | url: /rest/tinymce/1/drafts | traceId: 88960e0d8ea2e8bc | userName: willy com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.XhtmlException: RuntimeException occurred while transforming editor format to storage format (null) at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.editor.EditorXhtmlTransformer.transform(EditorXhtmlTransformer.java:58) at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.TransformerChain.transform(TransformerChain.java:33) at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.TransformerChain.transform(TransformerChain.java:33) at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.PluggableTransformerChain.transform(PluggableTransformerChain.java:39) at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.editor.DefaultEditorConverter.convert(DefaultEditorConverter.java:37)

Cause

While the exact cause is unknown, it appears that this problem results when copying and pasting certain content into the page that includes a character or characters that Confluence can't handle properly.

Solution

A couple of possible workarounds exist for this particular issue:

  1. If the page is published, please try copying the page's content to another new page and then reintroduce any unpublished changes.  You could do this for the whole page at once or in sections.

  2. Alternatively, download and install the free Source Editor plugin and then try either:

    1. Editing the page using the Source Editor and saving, or

    2. Copying the page's content from the Source Editor to an external editor and then copying and pasting the content back to Source Editor and then saving the page

Updated on March 19, 2025

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