Switching to the new Tabs macro

Owned by
Elizabeth Tai
Last updated: Sept 21, 2023 by
Smita Nair
4 min read

Purpose

With the arrival of the new editing experience in Confluence Cloud that does not support Nested Bodied macros (CONFCLOUD-68323), Tab Group and Tab macros will not work properly in New Editor.

To continue using tabs and enjoy future improvements, we recommend converting to the new Tabs macro available in the page editor. It offers an all-new macro tailored to work with the new editing experience in Confluence Cloud, while also providing backward compatibility with the Legacy Editor.

If you just recently migrated your pages from Server, all your migrated pages would arrive in Cloud as Legacy Editor. 

Answer

You can keep using Tab and Tab Group macros If you don't plan to convert your pages to the New Editor. 

Tab & Tab Group macros are quite different than their server counterpart. Take note of the list of the Incompatible macros when nested within Composition Cloud's Tab and Tab Group macros.

However, if you plan to or have converted to the New Editor, consider switching to Tabs macros because Tab and Tab Group macros will not work properly in the New Editor.

You can convert content from the existing Tab Group and Tab macros to the new Tabs macro automatically or manually

Moving content automatically

Things to know before doing the conversion:

  1. Some macros inside the tab may be lost. See here for a list of macros that Tabs macro support. 

  2. Doing this process will create a new version of this page. 

  3. If the content does not seem to render properly after the conversion, you can always restore the previous version of the page via Page History.

  4. To enjoy the full benefit of Tabs macro, you may opt to convert the page itself to the New Editor. This is a separate process that is done after the conversion to Tabs macro.

Steps to convert content automatically

  1. Find a page that contains Tab & Tab group macros. You will see the following "Legacy macro" warning on the page,

  2. Click on the warning to reveal more information and to access the converter tool.

  3. Click Switch to Tabs.  The conversion process may take a while to complete.

  4. The Tab & Tab group macros have been converted to the Tabs macro. If you edit the page, you will now see the JSON text format used by the New Editor. This is expected behavior because you are still in the Legacy Editor. While we recommend you convert the page to the New Editor (see steps below), there may be reasons to continue using the Legacy Editor. For example, when the tabs contain certain third-party macros that are not compatible with New Editor.

  5. You can click the macro area and click the Edit in the popup to update your tabs.

Steps to convert the page to the New Editor (recommended)

  1. As long as this page is in the Legacy Editor, it will always show the JSON text format. Follow the steps here to convert the page to the New Editor and you will not see the JSON again. Near the bottom of the page, there is an option to convert the page to the New Editor. Click on Preview page to continue.

Note: The Legacy-to-New Editor converter tool is a part of Confluence Cloud (Atlassian).

  1. A popup will appear. Click on Preview your page first. Then you can click either Preview or Convert page.

  1. After a few moments, the page will be converted to the New Editor and published. You can confirm this by clicking on Edit again. The newer Tabs macro and its content can be seen.

Moving content manually

  1. Edit the page.

  2. Copy the content from inside the Tab macro.

  3. Create a new Tabs macro. Either select from the macro browser, or use the keyboard shortcut ( "/" for new editor or "{" for old editor).

    New editor:

    Old editor:

  4. In the Tabs editor window, paste the content:

     

    Note that some formatting may be lost.

  5. Repeat the copy-and-paste steps for all your tabs.

  6. Save the macro, and the page. Remove the old Tab Group and Tab macros if necessary.

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