Character Set Conversion to Emoticon is Automatic on Document Import

When a Word document is imported into Confluence, if the document being imported contains character sets that match a Jira/Confluence emoticon the page created then contains an emoticon instead of the character set. There is no way to search an emoticon on a page, the user must scroll through the entire page to manually look for them. The profile setting of an individual has no impact on whether or not this occurs. 

It would be more beneficial for the import process to not convert the character sets to emoticons or to offer the option to select that they convert when selecting options related to the import process.

Below is the write-up/work around I have provided for our teams in our internal Confluence FAQ.

Question: Why are there emoticons on the Confluence page created by importing a Word document?

Answer: Confluence and Jira allow the insertion of emoticons. The tool functionality does not allow the ability to turn of the auto generation of emoticons when using the import feature.

When importing a Word document to Confluence, the supported character sets (if they exist in the document) will be converted to emoticons within your page in Confluence. For example, if the document contains a string within parentheses ending with a colon (e.g., (Name) when imported, that will display in the document as a smiley face (see picture below). If the document contains a demo of a hyphen (e.g., hyphen ) this will be converted to a minus Emoticon (see picture below).

This can be avoided at import by doing a global search, in the Word document, and replacing the occurrence using additional spaces to prevent the issue. For example, using a space after the colon within parentheses (e.g., (Name: ) or to remove the colon (Name), etc.) will prevent the smiley (as seen in the picture above or using spaces on either side of the hyphen within parentheses (e.g., hyphen ( - )) will prevent the minus Emoticon (as seen in the picture above).

The other option is to check the document after import for Emoticon which can be tedious as there is no way to use the search function to locate them. Once located the document can be edited to adjust the Emoticon back to text.

A list of the emoticons that can be inserted in Confluence and Jira are found in Confluence Support on the Symbols, Emoticons and Special Characters page. Of these, the ones that are most likely to be encountered in a Word document import are:

• Smiley from
• Winking from
• Star from
• Minus from