Anchors

You can use anchors to enable linking to specific locations on a page, and they can be especially useful for allowing your readers to navigate to specific parts of a long document. Anchors are invisible to the reader when the page is displayed.

There are two steps to using an anchor:

Step 1: Create the anchor

Step 2: Create a link to the anchor

Step 1: Create the anchor

Add the Anchor Macro to mark the location you want to link to:

  1. Do either of the following in the Confluence editor:
    • Choose Insert > Other Macros, then find and select the Anchor macro
    • Type { and the beginning of the macro name, then select the Anchor macro
  2. Enter the Anchor Name (For example, 'bottom' or 'important information')
  3. Choose Insert

On this page:

Related pages:

Macro options (parameters)

Where the parameter name used in Confluence storage format or wikimarkup is different to the label used in the macro browser, it will be listed below in brackets (example).

Parameter

Default

Description

Anchor Name

None

This is the anchor name that you will use when creating the link.

  • The anchor name can include spaces. Confluence will remove the spaces automatically when building a URL that points to this anchor.
  • The anchor name is case sensitive. You must use the same pattern of upper and lower case letters when creating the link as you used when creating the Anchor macro.

Step 2: Create a link to the anchor

You can link to an anchor from:
  • A page on the same Confluence site. The link may be on the same page as the anchor, another page in the same space, or a page in another space on the same Confluence site.
  • Another web page or another Confluence site, using a specifically formatted URL.

Link to an anchor on the same Confluence site:

  1. Select some text or position your cursor where you want to insert the link
  2. Choose Link in the toolbar or press Ctrl+K
  3. Choose Advanced and enter the anchor name in the Link field, following the format below.

    Anchor locationLink syntax for anchorExamples
    Same page#anchor name

    #bottom

    #important information

    Page in same spacepage name#anchor name

    My page#bottom

    My page#important information

    Page in different spacespacekey:page name#anchor name

    DOC:My page#bottom

    DOC:My page#important information

  4. Enter or modify the Link Text (this is the text that will appear on the page. If this field is left blank, the page name or URL will be used as the link text)
  5. Choose Save
  • Anchor names are case sensitive.
  • Enter page and anchor names with spaces when you link to them in the same Confluence site. A good way to do this is to copy the page title exactly as appears on the page. Don't copy the page URL, as we don't want to include the + symbol).
  • If you're linking to an anchor on a different page that has special characters in its name, where the URL displays a page ID rather than a name, you should still enter the page name when linking to it.

Screenshot: The 'Advanced' option in the link dialog


Link to an anchor from another web page or another Confluence site:

Use a full URL in the following format:

Link syntax

Examples

http://myconfluence.com/display/spacekey/pagename#pagename-anchorname

http://myconfluence.com/display/DOCS/My+page#Mypage-bottom

http://myconfluence.com/display/DOCS/My+page#Mypage-importantinformation

Notes about the full URL:

  • The page name is repeated in the URL, after the # sign. The second occurrence of the page name is concatenated into a single word, with all spaces removed.
  • There is a single dash (hyphen) between the concatenated page name and the anchor name.
  • The anchor name in the full URL is concatenated into a single word, with all spaces removed.
  • The anchor name is case sensitive.
  • If the page name contains special characters, where the URL displays a page ID rather than a name, the link to an anchor will look more like this http://myconfluence.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=54689987#Test-page1!-anchor 
    In this example the page title is Test - Page 1! and the anchor name is anchor.

Notes

  • Table of contents on a page: Consider using the Table of Contents Macro to generate a list of links pointing to the headings on the page. The list of links will appear on the page, and will be automatically updated each time someone changes the wording of a heading.
  • Linking to headings: You can link directly to the headings of a page. See Links. However, if someone changes the wording of a heading, those direct links will be broken. Use the Anchor macro to ensure a lasting link within the body of a page.
  • Site welcome message: If you are adding an anchor to a page that you are using in the site welcome message, you can only link to that anchor from another page. Internal links within that page will not work.
  • Templates: When you are previewing a template, a link to an anchor is displayed as a 'broken' link. However, when you create a page using the template the resulting page will have the correct link.
Last modified on Nov 24, 2021

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