How do you downgrade to an earlier version of Confluence?

[Felicity Chapman]

We're evaluating Confluence and unfortunately installed version 4.3. Many of the plug-ins that we need to evaluate do not support version 4.3.

Is it possible to downgrade to Confluence 4.2? and if so, how would we do this.

Is it possible to manually install the plug-ins in our Confluence 4.3 and see if they do work?

Any thoughts about the best solution?

[Alejandro Conde Carrillo · Accepted solution]

You could try this:

1. Take Space XML exports for all your spaces.
2. Install Confluence 4.2.x
3. Unzip and Open the XML sports and edit the build number so it matches the one from the version you choosed. You can find Conlfuence build numbers in this link. Remember to zip them back once you are done with the changes.
4. Import the modified XML exports into Confluence 4.2.x

Please note that this is not officially supported, but I think this should probably work between 4.3 and 4.2.

[Felicity Chapman]

Many thanks for your detailed instructions. If an experiment with the plug-ins in 4.3 fails, then I will try this next.

[Jorge]

Could you answer the similar question from 5.2 to 5?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It's the same process as 4.3 to 4.2

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ah, um, you can't downgrade. You can go back to the last backup you took of the 4.2 system, that's probably the best you can do.

You might be able to export everything from 4.3 and re-import it, but I don't think the process of manually downgrading the database is going to work.

[Felicity Chapman]

Thanks for a very speedy reply. We have no backup because we installed an evaluation of 4.3 and have never used Confluence 4.2.

Is it worth trying to install the relevant plug-ins manually? I don't know how different 4.3 is compared with 4.2.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, you can try that. There's no guarantees, but generally, with a very recent release, the "plugin is not valid for this version" actually means "it might be, but we haven't tested it yet". Manual installation will tell you, but I'd try it in a development system first, and backup the main system before risking it (That said, I've never had a plugin trash my data - generally the ones that aren't compatible go "eek" and fall over before writing any data)

[Felicity Chapman]

Many thanks for your help. I will experiment with installing the plug-ins manually and see what happens. Both your answer and the answer from Alex at Atlassian are very helpful, I don't know if I can mark them both as official 'answers' or not.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Alex's answer is probably the best approach for downgrading, and his point about official support is important - I have no idea how much the database has changed between 4.2 and 4.3, but he does, so it could be worth a try.

I'd still try upgrading the plugins first though. Confluence 4.3 is nicer than 4.2 :-)