Migrate a Confluence Cloud instance or merge instances from multiple sites

This page is for people who are currently using Confluence Cloud, and want to move their entire instance to a different cloud site — or merge Confluence Cloud instances from multiple sites.

Migrating a Confluence Cloud instance to an existing Confluence Cloud instance

When to use this method

• When you want to move from an existing Confluence Cloud instance to a Confluence Cloud instance on another site.

• When your new cloud site is Confluence-only. If you have both Confluence and Jira in your cloud site, you’ll need to import all of your spaces individually. See Import a Confluence Cloud space for information on how to do that. 

Before you begin

This process will replace all content and users from your Confluence Cloud instance, including:

• The content of all spaces exported from the other instance.

• The users exported from the other instance, including all administrators and non-administrators.

• The groups, and user memberships of those groups, exported from the other instance.

Step 1: Back up your destination cloud site

Before you back up your site, make sure all user accounts have a unique email address associated with them. If this isn't done, the import will fail. If you started an import and noticed that it imported all the data, and then failed, this may be the cause.

Step 2: Export the Confluence Cloud contents of your source site

To export the contents of Confluence Cloud from your source site, follow the steps described in Export a data backup file of your instance.

• Remember to include attachments in your backup

• Make sure all user accounts have a unique email address associated with them

Step 3: Check the size limits

Site import in Confluence Cloud is restricted to a maximum 200 megabytes for the uncompressed XML files inside the backup zip file. This is the 'data size' of the backup. There's no limit to the file size and number of attachments.

When you try to do the import, Confluence Cloud will inform you if the backup data is too large.

To manually check the data size of the backup:

1. Unzip the backup file.

2. Sum the sizes of the XML files in the root directory of the zip file (this will be at least the file named entities.xml and may also include XML files added by plugins).

What if the data size is okay?

If the data size of your site backup file is within the limits, import the site backup directly into the destination Confluence Cloud instance. See below.

What if the size limit is exceeded?

If the size of your site backup file is too large, you'll need to move the content space by space and ensure your user data is imported, too. This involves exporting each space individually. You can do this in your cloud site. 

Step 4: Import the site content into Confluence Cloud on your source site

If the data size of your site backup file is within the limit described above, import the site backup directly into the destination Confluence Cloud instance.

Apps

After migrating your data, you'll need to re-install any compatible apps, like Questions for Confluence and team calendars.

You can check whether your essential apps are available for Confluence Server, Cloud or both on the Atlassian Marketplace.

For migrating from Confluence Server to Confluence Cloud, see the Server to cloud migration guide.

Merging Confluence Cloud instances from multiple sites

Confluence Cloud does not support merging multiple sites, although that work is on our roadmap. You can watch this request for updates: CLOUD-11495 - Confluence Cloud to Cloud migration tooling IN PROGRESS. Workarounds are available. The workaround you choose depends on your needs, including how many Confluence sites you want to merge.

• To merge two sites, we recommend using a Confluence Data Center instance to facilitate the merging process. This is the simplest way to maintain your set up and configuration and only requires downtime for one of your cloud sites.

• To merge three or more sites, follow the instructions toimport a Confluence Cloud spaceto an existing cloud site.

Merging Confluence Cloud instances from two sites

This method requires setting up a Confluence Data Center instance. You’ll need to create a backup of the data from your source cloud site, restore this backup in the Data Center instance, and use the Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant to import the data into your destination cloud site. You can use this method to consolidate two cloud sites or move specific Confluence Cloud spaces from one site to another.

This is the simplest way to maintain your setup and configuration and only requires downtime for one of your cloud sites.

Instructions

Customers with two cloud sites can move all or some Confluence Cloud spaces from one site into the other in order to have a single, consolidated site.

This method requires setting up a Data Center instance.

To merge sites:

1. Install the latest version of Confluence Data Center. You can do this by generating a free trial license from my.atlassian.com. Note that Confluence Data Center trial licenses last for 30 days. If you need more time to complete your migration, licenses can be extended to 90 days upon request.

2. Export a data backup file of your instance of Confluence Cloud B. This will contain the users and spaces you want to import to Confluence Cloud A.

3. Import your data from Confluence Cloud B to Confluence Data Center.

4. Use the Confluence Cloud Migration Assistantto import your users and spaces from Confluence Data Center to Confluence Cloud A.

Limitations

• App data isn’t supported. After migrating your data, you’ll need to re-install any apps you need in the cloud.

• Some configurations might not be supported. Before choosing this method, check what gets migrated with the Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant.

• Knowledge of how to install and set up a Confluence Cloud Data Center instance is required.

Merging Confluence Cloud from three or more sites

The method outlined above using a Confluence Data Center instance is only suitable for merging two Confluence Cloud sites.

To merge three or more sites, follow these instructions to import a Confluence Cloud space to an existing cloud site.