Short answer. There are four separate problems that look alike. Images in formats Confluence does not support, and all Word shapes and SmartArt, become placeholders by design. Documents with many images can fail partially, which Atlassian tracks as a known issue. Inline images can arrive at their original size, also a known issue. And since March 2026 people report imports that bring in only the title, with no official explanation yet. Most of it is fixed in the .docx, before importing, in a few minutes.
What the built-in import accepts
Confluence Cloud imports a .docx as a new page, keeping headings, lists, tables and images. Atlassian's import documentation sets the limits:
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Document text, without attachments | 5 MB |
| Attachments (images) in the document | 100 MB |
| Bulk import | Up to 30 files, 50 MB in total, no file over 10 MB |
| Image formats | BMP, CUR, DDS, GIF, ICO, JPG, PNG, PSD, SVG, WEBP |
| Shapes drawn in Word | Replaced with placeholders |
The last two rows explain most "missing image" reports. Anything outside the format list is replaced with placeholder text, and so is every shape.
Problem 1: images became placeholders
The usual culprit is not a photo but a pasted object. A chart pasted from Excel usually lands in Word as an embedded chart rather than a picture, and a range pasted as a picture or a diagram copied from Visio is often stored as an EMF or WMF vector image. None of these is on Atlassian's list. The same goes for shapes, arrows and SmartArt drawn directly in Word.
The fix is in Word, before importing. Right-click the chart, diagram or SmartArt and choose Save as Picture, save it as PNG, then delete the original and insert the PNG in its place. Microsoft documents this for Word for Microsoft 365 in Save a picture or other graphic as a separate file. For a document with ten diagrams that is ten minutes, and you know exactly what will arrive.
Problem 2: many images, different ones missing each time
Atlassian tracks this as CONFCLOUD-76949: a document with many images imports partially with "Some images couldn't be imported", and the reporter saw different images fail on each attempt with the same file. The ticket is unresolved, and Atlassian's suggested workaround is to split the document into smaller ones, import them one by one, and combine the results on a single page.
If the document is long anyway, splitting it is often what you want: a 60-page manual reads better as a page tree than as one page. We wrote up how to split a Word document into Confluence pages separately.
Problem 3: inline images at the wrong size
Tracked as CONFCLOUD-82098: images set to "In line with text" in Word sometimes import at their original pixel size instead of the size shown in the document. It sits in Atlassian's long-term backlog, and the only workaround listed is to resize and realign the images by hand after import. Before importing, it helps to crop and resize screenshots in an image editor rather than in Word, so the original size is already the size you want.
Problem 4: only the title came through
Since March 2026 there is a Community thread, "[Urgent] Confluence Import function broken", where documents that used to import fine now produce a page with the title and nothing else. A reply from April 2026 reports the same after weeks of working imports. There is no official answer in the thread, and Atlassian has not published a cause. So what follows is not a diagnosis of Atlassian's converter, which we cannot see, but the cheap checks to run on the document.
- Content controls. Documents made from corporate templates often keep whole sections inside content controls, the boxes with "Click here to enter text". A converter that reads only plain paragraphs skips them, section headings included. In Word, right-click each control and choose Remove Content Control: the box goes, the text stays. If the option is missing, the control is locked; unlock it in the control's Properties on the Developer tab.
- Text boxes. Text inside a text box is not part of the normal flow. Move it into ordinary paragraphs.
- A fresh copy. Save the cleaned document as a new .docx, choosing the ordinary "Word Document" type, and import the copy.
If a clean copy still comes in empty, the problem is on Atlassian's side, and a support ticket with the file attached is the way to get it looked at.
We know the content-control case from our own code. While preparing this article we ran a test document through our importer and found it skipped sections inside content controls in exactly this way. We fixed it, but it shows how easily a converter drops a section without any error.
The arithmetic
Take a 40-page policy with 25 images, eight of them charts pasted from Excel. A plain import gives you eight placeholders, possibly a partial failure on the images, and screenshots at full width. Finding which picture belongs where, re-exporting the charts and resizing the rest on the page takes an hour or more. The same work done in Word before importing takes about fifteen minutes, because in Word you can still see what each picture was.
If your document is short, uses real heading styles and has ordinary JPG or PNG pictures, the built-in import handles it. Use it, it is free.
Where a separate importer helps
Disclosure: I build Word Import & Page Tree Builder for Confluence. It reads the .docx in your browser and splits it by headings into a page tree, which the built-in import does not do. It takes sections out of content controls and text boxes, keeps images in their place in the text and in table cells, keeps links, and runs inside Atlassian's infrastructure, so the file is not sent to us. It is free for teams up to ten people.
It has the same hard limits as anyone: browsers cannot display EMF or WMF, so convert those pictures to PNG first, and SmartArt needs Save as Picture whichever importer you use.
Frequently asked
Why does Confluence import only the title of my Word document?
No official cause has been published. Check content controls and text boxes first, remove the controls in Word, save a fresh copy and import that. If it still fails, open a ticket with Atlassian and attach the file.
Why do some images become placeholders?
Their format is not supported, or they are shapes. Pictures pasted from Excel and Visio are often EMF or WMF. Save them as PNG and re-insert them.
Can I import into an existing page?
Not with the built-in import, which always creates a new page. We covered the workarounds for importing into an existing page.
Are comments and tracked changes imported?
Do not count on it. Accept or reject tracked changes and delete comments before importing, so the page shows exactly the text you agreed on.
Related: how to import a Word document into Confluence, splitting a Word document into pages, and importing a Google Doc.
