How to find stale and outdated pages in Confluence

Old pages with wrong steps and old prices are still in search, and nobody owns them. Here is what Confluence Cloud gives you to find them and push someone to review them, where each tool stops, and the options.

Listing on the Atlassian Marketplace

Hullspark · updated 2026-10-24

Short answer

To find old pages: the content manager filters a space by last updated date and by last active. It is part of Premium and Enterprise only [1].
To clean them up: from the same screen you can archive, delete, change the owner or change the status, in batches of up to 500 (archive) or 100 (delete, change owner) [1].
To ask someone to review: there is no review date on a page. The closest built-in pieces are action items with a due date and the task report macro [2][4], or an approval on Premium and Enterprise [3].

What Confluence gives you out of the box

Confluence’s built-in ways to deal with old pages
Tool	Good for	Catch
Content manager (Premium, Enterprise)	Listing a space’s content by Last updated, Last active, labels, contributors or deactivated owner, then archiving or deleting in bulk [1]	Not on Standard. Atlassian says Last active does not return a complete list, and it only covers pages without child pages. No review date, no reminder
Action item with an assignee and a date, plus the task report macro	A manual review list: one task per page, and a table of open tasks sorted by due date [2][4]	You create every task yourself. The macro has no due-date filter and its documentation mentions no reminders. It is not available in live docs
Approvals (Premium, Enterprise)	A sign-off from named approvers, with an optional due date [3]	One-off sign-off on a page. The documentation lists no expiry or recurring review

A routine that works with the built-in tools

Decide what stale means for you, for example no edits in 12 months, and which spaces count.
On Premium or Enterprise, open the space’s content manager and filter by Last updated [1]. On Standard, use Confluence search and the page tree of each space. That is slower and does not give one list for the whole site.
Check the list by hand. A stable page, such as a policy that has not changed on purpose, is not outdated.
For each page worth keeping, add an action item for its owner, with a due date, on a page you use as a review list, and show the open ones with the task report macro [2].
Archive or delete the rest, in batches, from the content manager [1].
Put the next review in your calendar. Nothing in Confluence will bring you back to these pages.

Where the built-in tools stop

No review date on a page. None of the tools above stores “review this by 2027-03-01” on the page, or repeats it.
No reminder tied to a page. The documentation for the content manager and the task report macro describes listing, not sending a reminder [1][2].
Standard plans have no content manager. The finding step is manual there [1].
The list goes stale too. A review list built by hand needs someone to keep it up.

One option: our own app

I make a Confluence Cloud app for the part that is missing, Page Review Reminders by Hullspark (Marketplace listing) [5]. It works on every plan. What it does, as the current code and the product page describe it:

A reviewer and a due date on a page. In the page’s “…” menu, choose Apps > Set review policy. You can set a date or a repeat interval. The setting is saved as a page property; the page text is not edited.
A byline item on every page shows the review status (“Review: not set” or the due date). When a review is due soon or overdue, a banner also appears, with a “Mark as reviewed” button that moves the date on. Reviewers also see their due pages under Pages to review on Confluence Home.
An @mention comment. A daily scan posts one comment that @mentions the reviewer, or the page owner if none is set. Confluence then sends its own notification. The app sends no email itself. A page gets at most one reminder in 30 days.
A list of pages nobody has edited. The admin dashboard lists pages with no review date whose last edit is older than a number of days you set (365 by default). This uses the edit date, not page views.
Bulk set-up for admins. Tick pages and assign a reviewer and a date to all of them, after a dry-run count.
Space defaults. The current code has a Spaces tab where you set a default interval (180 days by default), with optional per-space overrides. Every page without its own setting is then due that many days after its last edit, with the page owner as reviewer. Pages already past the interval get their first due dates spread over the following weeks, so reminders do not all arrive on one day. A cap on comments per person per day (5 by default) stops one person getting a flood. This is newer than the product page; check the listing’s version notes to confirm it is in the version you install.

It does not archive or delete anything, and it does not decide which pages are wrong. A person reviews the page.

See it on the Atlassian Marketplace Product page with screenshots

Questions

Can Confluence list pages nobody has updated in a year?

Yes, on Premium and Enterprise. The content manager filters a space by Last updated (a date range) and by Last active (over 7 days to over 6 months). Atlassian warns that Last active does not return a complete list. Standard plans do not have the content manager.

Does the content manager remind anyone to review a page?

No. It is a clean-up tool: you filter, then archive, delete, change owner or change status. The documentation lists no review date or reminder.

Can the task report macro remind me when a page is due for review?

Not by itself. It lists tasks with their due dates and assignees, but it has no due-date filter, and the documentation does not mention reminders. It also needs someone to create a task per page.

Are Confluence approvals the same as a periodic review?

No. An approval is a sign-off on a page, with an optional due date, on Premium and Enterprise. The documentation does not mention expiry or recurring reviews.

Does the app delete or archive anything?

No. It writes a review setting on each page (a page property, not the page text) and posts @mention comments. Moving or removing pages stays a manual step in Confluence.

Does the app work out which pages are stale from views?

No. It uses the last edit date. A page that is read every day but not edited for a year counts as stale.

Do I need a Premium plan?

No. The app works on every Confluence Cloud plan. It is free for up to 10 users, with a 30-day free trial for larger sites. Current pricing is on the Marketplace listing.

Does publishing a new version of a page change its review date or reviewer?

Not in the usual case, with one exception below. The review date and reviewer are saved on the page itself, not on each version, so they are kept when you publish a new version. Editing a page does not mark it as reviewed; only the “Mark as reviewed” button does. The exception: a page with no review policy of its own, which uses the space's default settings instead, has its due date counted from its last edit, so editing it moves the date.

What I have not verified

I checked the Confluence claims on this page against Atlassian’s documentation on 2026-10-24. I did not re-test each one on a live site, and Atlassian changes plans and screens.

The app description comes from its current code and product page. I have not confirmed which version of the app the Marketplace is serving today. I have not tested other vendors’ apps and name none; read their listings.

Sources

[1] Atlassian Support: Clean up a space with the content manager: https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/manage-your-content-tree/
[2] Atlassian Support: Insert the task report macro: https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/insert-the-task-report-macro/
[3] Atlassian Support: Request and manage approvals in Confluence: https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/request-and-manage-approvals-in-confluence/
[4] Atlassian Support: Add elements to a page or live doc (action items): https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/insert-elements-into-a-page/
[5] Atlassian Marketplace listing of the app (fetched 2026-10-24): https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/2838947929

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