Export Content from Confluence - Part 2

This tutorial is part two in the three series of how to export content from Confluence. In the previous tutorial, we covered how to export content from Confluence using it's native solution Export Content from Confluence - Part 1.

In this post, we'll explore the process of how to export content from our favorite wiki using Scroll's EclipseHelp plugin into an HTML zip file.

Setup

This document assumes that you have the Scroll EclipseHelp plugin installed and properly enabled and that your user account has the proper credentials (at least view and export permissions) for exporting and plugin usage. If it's not, contact your Confluence administrator and request it to be set up.

This process was tested on Confluence 5.6.4 and Scroll EclipseHelp plugin version 3.5.0. Results may very with other versions.

Exporting using EclipseHelp

1. Navigate to the top most page in the space you wish to export from Confluence.
2. To start the process, go to menu for Tools > Export to EclipseHelp.
3. If this is your first time using this plugin, you may see a few global templates to choose from. This tutorial opts to create an export using custom settings so you can see what is available via this plugin. In the bottom left corner, click on the Customize Settings option.
4. From the General step, select the Default EclipseHelp Template from the Template option (selected by default).
5. From the Export option, you can select what you need to export (the current page and it's children, only the current page, or the current page and any children with an user specified label). For this tutorial, we'll use the option to export the current page and all it's children.
   
6. Click the Content Processing step next. From here, you have several options on what you want to export with your content like exporting the table of contents (toc), children, section, and numbered-headings macros, images with original resolution, and merging single, first heading and page title. To keep it simple, let's not include any of these options except for the images with the original resolution. By selecting this option, the process will download the original size of any and all images that are included on the selected wiki pages.
7. Skip down to EclipseHelp Features. In this step, you can add any additional features you would like to include in your export. The features you choose to include in your export will be up to you but if the content you are pulling from Confluence is meant to be a stand-alone doc set, I would at least include the following:
1. From the Index option, select the Create Index and Convert Labels to Index Terms. Including an index will generate additional documents called index.xml, toc.xml, and a few others associated with all your pages that you included in this export.
2. From the Compatibility option, Export to doc.zip. Once the export has finished, everything will be nicely wrapped up in a zip file called doc.zip.
8. In the File Naming step, you can define how the exported content should be handled. I normally leave this section alone as the default values work well for most common needs.
9. With you export options selected, click the Start Export button to start the export process. Depending on the size of the space or page selection you made, Confluence will churn for a moment or two. You should see an indicator window pop up telling you where you are in the export process. Once Confluence has finished with the export process, you will see your browser download a doc.zip file.
   
   
10. Upon the completion of the export, EclipseHelp will tell you the size of the content, how many pages you exported, how long the process took, and present you with a few options can you can use in the future to make this process go a little faster: Saving the export scheme, capture the ReST URL (for automation reasons), and managing the export schemes. If you know you will be exporting this space with these settings repeatedly, I recommend saving the export scheme you just created. Click the Save Export Scheme ... drop down and select as new.
11. Decide if this export scheme will be used globally throughout your Confluence instance or localized to just this particular space.
12. Provide a good name and description and click the Save button.
13. If you wish to automate the process by using the ReST URL, you will need to save the export scheme first (see steps 9 through 12 to save the scheme).
14. With the export scheme saved, you can now click the REST URL button to receive the URL you can use for automating this export process. 

With the completion of this tutorial, you should have an HTML copy of your selected content and an export scheme that can be used repeatedly to pull content from your desired space in Confluence into an HTML zip file without having to go through this entire process again.

For future exports, all you need to do now is go to Tools > Export to EclipseHelp and select the export scheme you created in this tutorial.