Purpose

When viewing or attempting to download attachments, you may receive a "Page not found" error. Additionally, you may receive either of the following errors in the application logs ( atlassian-confluence.log )

No AttachmentData object was returned when it was expected for attachment: Attachment: fileName v.1 (123456789)

2023-03-11 13:06:30,291 WARN [http-nio-8081-exec-172] [atlassian.confluence.pages.DefaultAttachmentManager] getAttachmentData Could not find data for attachment: Attachment: image2022-1-8 11:48:26.png v.1 (873607111) mninnes - com.atlassian.confluence.pages.persistence.dao.filesystem.AttachmentDataFileSystemException: No such file for Attachment: image2022-1-8 11:48:26.png v.1 (873607111) mninnes. Were looking at /sharedhome/confluence/data/attachments/ver003/205/184/874184705/88/96/873596338/873607111/1

The key string for the second error is the 'Were looking at'.

In many cases, the attachment itself is still on disk but isn't located in the specific directory that it's expected to be in.  Often this is due to an earlier page move operation that was incomplete, and so if we can find the attachment still on disk in a different directory, we just need to relocate it to the correct subdirectory that Confluence is expecting it to be in. 

As mentioned above, missing file problems are fixed in Confluence 8.1 because of the new attachment directory structure which doesn't require files to be moved if the page that they're attached to is moved)

Diagnosis - Does this apply to you?

If your attachments are still somewhere in your attachment directory, this knowledge article will help you resolve the broken attachments.  

To see if your attachments exist in your attachment directory, search the folder directory for an example attachment id of a broken attachment.  For example, if your attachment has an ID of 123456789, search your confluence home directory for a folder with this name. If you get a result, it means your attachment is on disk.

find <confluence-attachment-dir> | grep 123456789

find . -name 123456789

dir <confluence-attachment-dir> /s | findstr 123456789

Solution - File System based Attachment Storage (Confluence 3.0 and higher)

Download the Missing Attachments Script and follow the directions in the README.MD file

 Please ensure that at minimum Python 2.7 is installed, Python 3.5+ is recommended. Confluence must also be stopped whilst this script runs to ensure that there's no concurrent file operations occurring within the attachments directory.

It's recommended to run this from a Confluence node but you may also run the script from a local machine. The script requires access to the attachments directory from wherever you choose to run the script from, so ideally you should ensure that the OS user account running this script is the same OS user account which runs the Confluence process (preferred), or an account with equivalent rights/permissions.

 Before you begin, ensure you have a full backup of your attachments directory. You should test your recovery on a test server before applying it to production.

Solution - Database based Attachment Storage

There is no tool available to generate a report for missing attachments. However, if you find that you have attachments missing you can restore the attachment to the ATTACHMENTDATA table from a recent SQL backup.

If you do not have a Confluence backup from which you can restore an attachment, you can delete the attachment's record from the database. To delete the attachment if using database storage, run the following SQL commands: 

DELETE FROM CONTENTPROPERTIES WHERE CONTENTID IN (SELECT CONTENTID FROM CONTENT WHERE CONTENTTYPE = 'ATTACHMENT' and TITLE LIKE '%<ATTACHMENT_NAME>%');
DELETE FROM CONTENT WHERE CONTENTTYPE = 'ATTACHMENT' AND TITLE LIKE '%<ATTACHMENT_NAME>%';

DELETE FROM attachmentdata WHERE attachmentid IN (SELECT attachmentid FROM ATTACHMENTS WHERE TITLE LIKE '%<ATTACHMENT_NAME>%' );
DELETE FROM ATTACHMENTS WHERE TITLE LIKE '%<ATTACHMENTNAME>%'

The results returned from these queries don't confirm the attachments are missing.