How to Manage Confluence Attachments at Scale

Confluence storage fills up in a predictable way. Teams upload screenshots, export files, and old versions of diagrams. Pages get reorganized or deleted. The attachments stay. After a year or two, a significant portion of your Confluence storage is files that are no longer referenced by any page — orphaned attachments that cost storage budget without serving any purpose.

Cleaning this up manually is impractical at any scale. This guide covers how to audit and manage Confluence attachments systematically using Advanced Attachment Manager for Confluence.

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The Core Problem: Unused Attachments

An unused attachment is a file that was uploaded to Confluence but is no longer referenced anywhere in page content. This happens when:

• A page is deleted but its attachments remain
• An image is uploaded, replaced by a newer version, and the old version is left
• A file is attached to a page during a draft but never embedded in the final content
• Content is migrated from one space to another and the source attachments are left behind

Confluence's native attachment view shows you files per page. It doesn't have a cross-space view, doesn't flag unused files, and doesn't support bulk operations. Advanced Attachment Manager does.

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Step 1 — Find Unused Attachments

Open Advanced Attachment Manager from the Confluence global navigation: Apps → Advanced Attachment Manager.

The first filter to apply: Usage Status → Unused. This surfaces every attachment in the selected scope (page, space, or instance-wide) that isn't currently referenced by any page content.

For most Confluence instances that haven't been audited recently, this list is longer than expected. Sort by File Size (descending) to see the biggest storage consumers first — a handful of large video files or exported PDFs often account for a disproportionate share.

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Step 2 — Filter Down to What's Safe to Delete

Not every unused attachment should be deleted. Some are referenced in archived pages. Some are version history that someone may need to reference. Apply additional filters to narrow to what's clearly safe:

Filter by file type: Images and exported PDFs are the most common orphans. Filter to Images or Documents to work through the most common cases first.

Filter by upload date: Files uploaded more than 12 months ago and never used are strong candidates for deletion. Set the upload date range to filter out recent uploads.

Filter by uploader: If a departed team member uploaded most of the unused files, filtering by uploader gives you a focused list to review.

Use shift-click and ctrl/cmd-click to select individual files, or Select All after applying filters to select the entire filtered result set.

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Step 3 — Download Before Deleting (When Uncertain)

For any batch where you're not 100% confident, use Bulk Download before deleting. This downloads all selected files as a ZIP archive to your local machine.

Bulk Download is also useful for migration and archival purposes — before decommissioning a Confluence space, download all attachments to preserve them outside Confluence.

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Step 4 — Bulk Delete

With the files selected:

1. Click Delete Selected
2. Review the confirmation dialog — it shows the count and total size being freed
3. Confirm the deletion

Deletions are logged to the audit trail immediately. If you delete something that turns out to be needed, check the audit log first to confirm what was removed, then check if it can be recovered from Confluence's trash.

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Step 5 — Review the Audit Log

Every action taken in Advanced Attachment Manager — views, downloads, deletions — is recorded in the audit log. Access it from the app sidebar.

The audit log shows:

• Action type (deleted, downloaded, viewed)
• File name and size
• Space and page the file was attached to
• User who performed the action
• Timestamp

This is important for compliance-sensitive environments: you have a complete record of what was removed, by whom, and when.

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Scheduling Regular Cleanups

Attachment management is most effective as a recurring process rather than a one-time cleanup. A quarterly cadence works for most teams:

1. Filter to unused attachments uploaded more than 90 days ago
2. Sort by size, work through the top 50 by size
3. Bulk delete the clearly obsolete ones
4. Download and archive anything uncertain

After two or three cycles, the backlog of orphaned files is small enough that the quarterly review takes 15–20 minutes instead of hours.

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Space-Level vs. Instance-Level Audits

Advanced Attachment Manager supports two scopes:

Space-level: Scope the view to a specific Confluence space. Useful for space owners doing routine maintenance on their own space.

Instance-level: Confluence admins can view attachments across the entire instance. This is the right starting point for a storage audit — see total consumption by space, identify which spaces are the biggest consumers, and then drill into each one.

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A Note on Storage Recovery

After bulk deletion, Confluence doesn't immediately reclaim storage — deleted files go to Confluence trash first. A Confluence admin needs to empty the trash to release the storage.

Go to Confluence Administration → Trash → Empty Trash. After emptying, the storage reduction is reflected in your instance's storage usage.

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Install Advanced Attachment Manager for Confluence →