Sometimes, though rarely, users find they have a draw.io macro on a Confluence page, but no diagram showing. The most common way this happens is when a user manually copies the page content to another page. This loses the diagram attachment, use the built-in page copy functionality to copy the attachment as well.


If you find a broken draw.io diagram in a Confluence page, as long as the original diagram is on the system, you can recover it.


To display a draw.io diagram on a page, the draw.io macro contains an attribute that specifies a diagram name that is attached to a page (like a link).

Find the name of the moved diagram file

  1. Determine the name of the diagram attachment first. As an administrator, look at the page source - the underlying format that Confluence uses to describe the page. Click on … > View Storage Format in the top right to see a page’s source.
  2. Within the source, look for the structured-macro with the name “drawio”.
  3. Within the this macro definition, look for the diagramName parameter. In the following example, the diagramName is rulers-measurements.drawio.
<p><ac:structured-macro ac:name="drawio" ac:schema-version="1"
data-layout="default" ac:macro-id="41ddd3f1-9613-4f13-b0f1-9b24b68db2eb">
<ac:parameter ac:name="contentId">678821920</ac:parameter><ac:parameter
ac:name="simple">0</ac:parameter><ac:parameter ac:name="zoom">1</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="inComment">0</ac:parameter><ac:parameter
ac:name="pageId">678854685</ac:parameter><ac:parameter
ac:name="diagramDisplayName">rulers-measurements.drawio</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="lbox">1</ac:parameter><ac:parameter
ac:name="contentVer">1</ac:parameter><ac:parameter
ac:name="revision">1</ac:parameter><ac:parameter
ac:name="baseUrl">https://drawio.atlassian.net/wiki</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="diagramName">rulers-measurements.drawio</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="width">1151</ac:parameter><ac:parameter
ac:name="links" /><ac:parameter ac:name="tbstyle" /><ac:parameter
ac:name="height">911</ac:parameter></ac:structured-macro></p>

Search for the diagram file and restore it

  1. Copy the diagram name and enter it into Confluence’s search function.
    Tip: Restrict the search results to just Attachments.
  2. If the revision parameter is 1, you can simply copy the diagram attachment back to your original page to fix the problem with the draw.io macro.
  3. If the revisionparameter is higher:
    • Download the attachment from the incorrect page to your device.
    • Edit the original page and delete the old macro.
    • Insert a new draw.io diagram macro.
    • In the diagram editor, drag and drop the file you had previously saved onto the drawing canvas.
    • Save the diagram, and save the Confluence page.

Repeat these steps for each draw.io diagram macro on the page that is broken.