If every entry in a diary should follow the same shape — a status, a decision, a fixed set of headings — you can point the Diary at a Confluence page template and let each new entry start from it.
Choosing a template
Open the macro configuration and pick one from Template For New Entries. The dropdown lists:
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the page templates of the current space, first
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the site-wide templates, each prefixed Global
📷 Screenshot: template-dropdown.png — the Template For New Entries dropdown open in the configuration panel, showing no template at the top, then a space template or two, then at least one entry prefixed Global. The prefix is the thing worth making legible.
Choose no template to go back to starting from a blank editor. Blueprints are not listed — they are wizards rather than plain content, so they cannot seed an entry.
You only ever see the templates Confluence would show you anywhere else: the app reads them as you, not with elevated rights.
What the entry editor can hold
The Diary entry editor is Confluence's comment editor, which supports rather less than a full page does. A template is therefore reduced to what the editor can hold, rather than copied in whole:
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Headings, paragraphs, lists, quotes and text formatting are kept as they are.
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Anything the editor cannot hold is flattened to its words — a date becomes the date it displays, a mention the name it displays, a table its cells as a run of paragraphs.
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Macros contribute nothing, because an entry has no way to render them.
📷 Screenshot: template-seeded-editor.png — ideally a pair of images, or one side-by-side composite: the template as it looks on a page, and the entry editor opened with that same template seeded into it. Seeing the reduction happen is much clearer than reading about it. Pick a template with a heading, a list, and a table so all three behaviours show.
A template written for a page will therefore seed an entry that reads like the template rather than one that looks like it. If you want an exact match, write a small template specifically for diary entries.
If a template cannot be read
Seeding is best-effort. If the chosen template has been deleted, or cannot be read for any other reason, the editor simply opens empty and you can still write your entry. You will not get an error, and nothing else about the Diary is affected.