Children display macro not showing all pages when sorting is set to "None" (Confluence 9.2.3)

[Mikko Taponen]

Environment:
Confluence Data Center 9.2.3 (upgraded from 8.5.17)

Issue Summary:
After upgrading to Confluence 9.2.3, we’ve noticed that the Children Display macro does not show all child pages when the sorting option is set to "None". However, when we change the sorting to "Simple", all child pages appear as expected.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Create a parent page with 20+ child pages.
2. Insert the Children Display macro on the parent page.
3. Set the sorting option to "None".
4. Publish the page.

Expected Behavior:
All child pages should be listed regardless of the sorting option.

Actual Behavior:
Only a subset of child pages is displayed when sorting is set to "None". Switching to "Simple" or "Position" resolves the issue.

Additional Context:

• The issue does not occur in our test environment, which is also running 9.2.3.
• We suspect this may be related to the confluence.child-macro.page-limit system property or a bug in how the macro handles the "None" sorting mode.
• Permissions and indexing have been verified and are consistent across environments.

Questions:

• Has anyone else experienced this issue in 9.2.x?
• Is this a known bug or a change in behavior?
• Is there a recommended workaround or fix?
• Should we avoid using "None" as a sorting option in production?

Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[Mikko Taponen]

Problem Statement
I understand that you're experiencing an issue with the Children Display macro in Confluence 9.2.3, where not all child pages are displayed when the sorting option is set to "None".

Information Sharing
As a first step, I'd recommend you too check if you have Faster Permissions enabled by navigating to General Configuration > Faster permissions? The option Faster permissions service will either be Disabled or Enabled.

I've seen a recent case where it happened to another customer after upgrading to Confluence 9.2.3 and it was resolved through the following steps:

Flushing the Confluence cache via General Configuration > Cache Management

Navigate to General Configuration > Faster Permissions to disable and re-enable Faster Permissions

Info It's slightly similar to the documented KB here: Confluence search, task report, and children macro shows incorrect pages due to Faster Permissions. https://support.atlassian.com/confluence/kb/confluence-search-task-report-and-children-macro-shows-incorrect-pages-due-to-faster-permissions/ 

[Vishalakshi Narayana Swamy]

Hi @Mikko Taponen

Welcome to Atlassian community!

I see that you are referring to confluence data center, since we don't have access to the site or any information on the site URL.

I suggest you to raise a request here https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-server/ where one of our support engineer from the server team will assist you further on this request.

Best Regards,

Vishalakshi Narayanaswamy

[Mikko Taponen]

Thx,

a newbie here, i created a support ticket and hopefully there is something to wait. 

[Tom Holland 222]

<p>We’ve noticed that in <strong>Confluence 9.2.3</strong>, the <strong>Children Display macro</strong> does not render all pages when the sorting option is set to “None.” This appears to be a bug or limitation in the current version.</p>

<p>As a workaround, you may consider setting a different sort option (e.g., by title or creation date) to ensure all child pages are displayed properly. Alternatively, reviewing the page hierarchy for inconsistencies or hidden restrictions may help identify potential conflicts.</p>

<p>For teams using Confluence to organize multilingual or media-rich documentation—such as our setup for <strong>Tele Latino</strong>—ensuring full visibility of all child pages is critical. We hope Atlassian addresses this issue in an upcoming release.</p>

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Hmm @Mikko Taponen ,

I've tried searching for open bugs/suggestions on this topic, but I couldn't find anything related.
I don't have DC instance at the moment to test it out :/

You could reach out to Atlassian Support to see if they have any additional insights related to the behavior you've noticed.
If you reach out to them, feel free to share the conclusion here — it might help other forum members if they stumble upon the same/similar issue.

Cheers,
Tobi

[Mikko Taponen]

Thanks for reply, I create a support task and hope some information may come in some point. I also tried the reindex in our environment and that did not seem to have any improvement.

- Mikko