Confluence Cloud Site Backup/Export - what is the file format?

[Patty Feehan]

When you create a site backup and download the backup file what is the format of that backup file? Is the backup compiled or will we see individual files for each Page and Attachment. If an attachment was a PDF or Word document is that what is exported? Will we see individual XML files for each Page?

The following link is in reference to my question:https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/create-a-site-backup-724765526.html

[Shannon S]

Hello Patty,

Welcome to Atlassian Community. It's nice to meet you!

To summarize, the site backup file that the Backup Manager creates for you contains information on your pages, users and groups, and attachments, if you so choose. This is delivered in the form of a .zip file, and contains various XML files that Confluence can read in order to restore a site's content.

When you unzip the file, it will contain the following:

In the attachments/ folder, you will find a directory structure similar to Confluence's own internal structure. Each folder will have a separate numeric ID that matches the numeric page ID assigned to a page in Confluence. Within those directories, you will find your Confluence page attachments.

The page content isn't as easily accessible. The overall .zip file is meant to be re-imported into another Confluence site in order to restore your content. For that reason, the data contained within is written in XML, which Confluence is able to read and interpret. Therefore, this information isn't human-readable. The purpose of the site backup is not to be able to access your content offline. 

If you want to be able to view your Confluence pages offline, I recommend trying some of the solutions from the page: Confluence: Can I work with Confluence content in offline mode? 

Is there a particular use you had in mind for your site backup? If you could perhaps tell me what you're trying to do, I might have a solution for you.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Shannon

[Patty Feehan]

We are planning to move our hosted Confluence site to a Confluence cloud server. I am trying to make sure that our documentation we will be storing on the cloud server can be easily retrieved if we decide to move to a different format in the future. Just making  sure we have total control over the information and assets we will be storing in Confluence. Thanks for your help.

[Shannon S]

Hello Patty,

Thank you for elaborating on that!

If you use the Confluence site backup, you need to be able to restore it to a compatible version of Confluence in order to read the data. Therefore, I would definitely recommend using one of the offline mode options.

Take care, and have a pleasant rest of your week.

Shannon