# What a publish actually copies

Confluence's own content-copy is called with attachments and labels included, and page restrictions, content properties and custom content excluded. Before the copy runs, the page body is scanned: a link to another page in the same source space that already has a published copy is rewritten to point at that copy; a link to a source space that has its own publish configuration is rewritten to that space's target; a link to a page that is not published yet is left pointing at the source page and recorded as a "missing link". The Capable approval macro is stripped from the published copy.

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## Where to find it

Every publish, in every mode

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## Where you do it

| **Task**                                               | **Where**                                                                                                  |
| ------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Turn on publishing for a space and choose where conten | Space settings → Publishing → Setup tab (or the Settings section inside the Capable Publishing space page) |
| Decide whether people can publish by hand, and whether | Space settings → Publishing → Setup tab                                                                    |
| Choose where published pages land and whether the tree | Space settings → Publishing → Structure tab                                                                |

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## Settings that affect this

| **Setting**             | **Where**                               | **What it does** |
| ----------------------- | --------------------------------------- | ---------------- |
| Enable publishing       | Space settings → Publishing → Setup tab | \-               |
| Target space            | Space settings → Publishing → Setup tab | \-               |
| Allow manual publishing | Space settings → Publishing → Setup tab | \-               |

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## Worth knowing

* The claim that saving configuration requires administrator rights on both spaces is not true of the server. Saving is really only gated on source-space administration. The check that looks like a target-space check re-reads the source space. Target-space administration is a client-side Save-button disable that only fires when the target actually changes. Bulk publish is the one path that genuinely
* The Allowed publishers list takes individual users only. There is no group option, unlike Approval, which has both a user list and a group list.
* The byline's space-administrator fallback for the publish restriction checks administration of the TARGET space, while the server checks the SOURCE space. A source-space administrator who does not administer the target space sees the Publish button hidden even though the server would have allowed the call.
* There is no server-side enforcement of which content types may be published. The byline gate is client-side only, the equivalent server check is disabled, and the server accepts pages, blog posts and folders regardless of the space setting.
* Configuration cannot be saved while a cleanup or rebuild is running for the space, and bulk publish is blocked at the same time. But the block is best-effort: if the background tables cannot be read, the save is allowed through.
* There is no control anywhere for "publish as user", yet the value is real: if the app itself cannot write to the target space, it falls back to that nominated account.

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## Related

[What re-publishing doesAnother part of how this works.](https://help.gocapable.com/publishing/what-re-publishing-does.html)

[Publishing foldersAnother part of how this works.](https://help.gocapable.com/publishing/publishing-folders.html)

[How it worksThe rest.](https://help.gocapable.com/publishing/how-it-works.html)

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_How it actually behaves._