How do I get my attachments back?

[Ben McKenna]

I've recently started using Confluence with no issues and have recently purchased a 10 user license.

Since then I've noticed all my attachments from all spaces have gone missing.

Any new attachments seem to work fine.

Where have my old attachments gone, and how can I get them working again?

[Tarun Sapra · Accepted solution]

Visit the "Attachment storage" section of your confluence instance to see the location of Attachments on the file system. Just be sure that they still exists and haven't been deleted. 

https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/attachment-storage-configuration-166876.html

Then follow steps here

https://confluence.atlassian.com/confkb/how-to-resolve-missing-attachments-in-confluence-201761.html

And here

https://confluence.atlassian.com/confkb/restoring-attachments-from-a-filesystem-backup-to-an-imported-space-951392066.html

[Ben McKenna]

Thanks for your help, however my attachments don't appear to be within the "Attachment Storage" location specified.

Can I get them back somehow?

Are they likely to get deleted again in future??

[Tarun Sapra]

@Ben McKenna

Did you see the location in the admin section, if it's not there then it seems they are actually removed from the filesystem, in that case I am afraid I don't see a way of getting them back.

[Ben McKenna]

My attachment location is specified as follows.

C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\attachments

When I navigate to that directory all I see is a single directory named "ver003"

Within that directory are a number of cascading numbered directories as follows.

C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\attachments\ver003\40\24\524290\235\110\360485\1212424

And within that directory are two files.

"1" and "1.extracted_text"

That's all I see.

[Tarun Sapra]

yes, that's the attachement. So you have the attachments, they are not deleted.

[Ben McKenna]

Ok, I managed to get things working.

I found another attachment folder in the following location which seemed to contain a lot more data.

C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Confluence\confluence\attachments

I copied and merged this attachments folder to the attachment location specified in Confluence settings and all seems to be working normally again now.

No idea why things would end up like this in the first place??

[Tarun Sapra]

Good to know , it's working back again. If my answer helped then please accept/upvote. Ideally the attachements are always under the directory structure "application data". So I am not sure how your attachments got into the directory 

C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Confluence\confluence\attachments

[Ben McKenna]

Thanks mate.

Done.