Up until recently the only way to organize content in Confluence was to put it under other content. For example if I wanted to organize all of my meeting notes in the same spot I would have to create a page called “Meeting notes” to be the parent for all the other pages.

This is a bit silly, as that “meeting notes” page’s only purpose is to serve as a place to put other content. It doesn’t offer anything new to folks, no new information, nothing.  Essentially it’s a placeholder that people can get confused by, or, at best, just another thing to click on on their way to somewhere else.

That, however, is all changing now that Folders are being released. The rollout began in mid September and will gradually expand to include everyone.

Keep reading for more and check out this video for a walkthrough

What are folders?

Folders don’t contain any content themselves, instead, they allow you to organize content in your content tree. Other than not having any of their own content, they behave very similarly to other things in Confluence - you can rename them, star them, restrict them and more.

They allow you to more easily manage and organize your content by providing a way to contain information without requiring a page.

Why are they useful?

Folders are useful because they allow you to better organize content in a way that makes sense to your needs. Prior to this, the only way to do this was to create a page that didn’t have anything on it (or had very minimal information like the “child pages” macro). This served a similar function, however, resulted in non-useful content being added to your space.

What are some use cases?

Personally I take a lot of meeting notes in Confluence and I frequently end up with a string of pages just called “Meeting Notes” or “Meeting notes from Q1”. The only thing those pages do is serve to organize underlying meeting notes, so folders will easily replace those.

Other use cases I can easily see being useful include:

1. Support materials - Have a folder called “Get Support Here” (or something similar) and put any content related to support under it

2. How to - Another thing I commonly do is built out how-to articles. Now I can group them all under a single folder (or series of folders) to help my team more easily find content.

Can I turn folders off?

Yes, space admins can disable folders on a space-by-space basis. I cannot think of a specific reason to do this, however, if a group doesn’t think they’re needed they can be disabled.

Can I turn existing pages into folders?

Yes - any existing page can be converted into a folder. This will make it much easier to convert those placeholder pages. Even better, Confluence will save an archived copy of the original page in case you need it later. Just go to More Actions -> Convert page to folder.

What else should I know?

If you happen to have pages that are either blank or only have the “child pages” macro, Confluence will let you know you can convert them to a folder via a banner at the top of the page when you edit it. Personally I appreciate this call out, as it can be very easy to be complacent and leave those placeholder pages.