Use the Children Display macro to list the child pages of a page and the further descendants (children's children). By default, the macro displays links to the child pages as shown in the screenshot below. People viewing the page will see only the links for pages that they have permission to view.

Screenshot: The Children Display macro in Confluence

Using the Children Display macro

To add the Children Display macro to a page:

  1. In the Confluence editor, choose Insert > Other Macros
  2. Find and select the required macro

Speeding up macro entry with autocomplete: Type { and the beginning of the macro name, to see a list of suggested macros. Details are in Autocomplete for links, files, macros and mentions.

To edit an existing macro: Click the macro placeholder and choose Edit. A macro dialog window will open, where you can edit the parameters of the macro.

Parameters

Parameters are options that you can set to control the content or format of the macro output. 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

Show Descendants
(all) 

false

Choose whether to display all the parent page's descendants.

If true shows the complete tree of pages underneath the parent page, regardless of Depth of Descendants

Parent Page
(page) 

current

Specify the page to display children for, from either the current space or a different space. Enter:

  • '/' — to list the top-level pages of the current space, i.e. those without parents.
  • 'pagename' — to list the children of the specified page.
  • 'spacekey:' — to list the top-level pages of the specified space.
  • 'spacekey:pagename' — to list the children of the specified page in the specified space.

Number of Children
(first) 

none

Restrict the number of child pages that are displayed at the top level.

Depth of Descendants
(depth) 

none

Enter a number to specify the depth of descendants to display. For example, if the value is 2, the macro will display 2 levels of child pages.

This setting has no effect of Show Descendants is enabled.

Heading Style
(style) 

none

Choose the style used to display descendants.

Include Excerpts
(excerpt) 

false

If you have an excerpt macro on any of the returned pages, checking this option will display the first line of the excerpt.

For pages without an excerpt macro, nothing is displayed.

Sort Children By
(sort) 

Manual if manually ordered, otherwise alphabetical

Optional. Choose:

  • creation — to sort by content creation date
  • title — to sort alphabetically on title
  • modified — to sort of last modification date.

Reverse Sort
(reverse) 

false

Use with the Sort Children By parameter. When set, the sort order changes from ascending to descending.

Code examples

The following examples are provided for advanced users who want to inspect or edit the underlying markup for a Confluence page. 

Macro name: children

Macro body: None.

Storage format example

<ac:structured-macro ac:name="children">
  <ac:parameter ac:name="reverse">true</ac:parameter>
  <ac:parameter ac:name="sort">creation</ac:parameter>
  <ac:parameter ac:name="style">h4</ac:parameter>
  <ac:parameter ac:name="page">
    <ac:link>
      <ri:page ri:content-title="Home"/>
    </ac:link>
  </ac:parameter>
  <ac:parameter ac:name="excerpt">true</ac:parameter>
  <ac:parameter ac:name="first">99</ac:parameter>
  <ac:parameter ac:name="depth">2</ac:parameter>
  <ac:parameter ac:name="all">true</ac:parameter>
</ac:structured-macro>

Wiki markup example

{children:reverse=true|sort=creation|style=h4|page=Home|excerpt=true|first=99|depth=2|all=true}
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