Publishing folders
Confluence folders hold your page tree together, so Publishing treats them as structure. Publish a folder and everything inside it is published too. Publish a page inside a folder and the folder is created in the target space first, so the page lands in the right place.
#What happens when you publish a folder
You do | What happens |
|---|---|
Publish a folder from its byline | The folder is created in the target space, then every child page and child folder inside it is published, however many there are. |
Publish a page that sits in a folder | The folder is created first if it is not in the target space yet, then the page goes inside it. |
Approve a page that sits in a folder | Same as above. Folders are always created for approvals, even when their parent pages are not published. |
Run Publish all | Folders are published before the pages, so they are ready for the pages that go inside them. |
Since 19 October 2026 a folder with more than 250 children is published in full, and child folders are always found.
#Which folders can move
When pages are published out of order, Publishing tidies the target space afterwards and moves items under their right parent. It is careful about what it moves.
Folder in the target space | Can Publishing move it? |
|---|---|
A folder Publishing created | Yes. It keeps track of its own folders, even when it finds them again by title on a later publish. |
A folder with the same title that someone made by hand before publishing | No. Publishing reuses it as the target for the source folder, but never moves it. |
A folder or page someone moved by hand in the target space | No. Publishing only moves items that sit where it put them. |
If a folder cannot be created at the moment a page is published, the page is published under the nearest place it can go, and the folder is created and the page moved in on a later check. Nothing fails because of it.
#A few things that catch people out
Folders never appear in the Published, Unpublished, Outdated, Moved, Failed or Invalid lists, even though they are published and tracked.
Publish approved never includes folders, because folders have no approval. Their pages still land inside them, because the folders are created on demand.
With Flatten to parent on the Structure tab, folders are not mirrored. Every page goes straight under the parent page or space root.
If the app cannot write to the target space, publishing fails. The settings screen shows an error banner, but still lets you save.
Three apps include Publishing: Publishing for Confluence, the Capable Suite and Approval for Confluence. Each keeps its own publish records, so a page can carry two independent publish states if more than one is installed.
#Related
Folders first, then everything inside them.
