Hi everyone,

Thank you for previously raising this bug and bringing it to our attention.

Within our company roadmap and work capacity, we try to address or review each bug request but admit that not each one will be resolved. To continue the culture of being honest and open, we are closing this bug to focus on our upcoming roadmap for all Confluence users.

As we continue to roll out features we do look at requests made by our users and if you feel like this bug is still impacting your team please let us know.

Thank you again for providing valuable feedback to our team!

I found a situation where the workaround doesn't work: if I want to place a link on an image. I can paste in an image with a link and everything looks fine; however, after saving the template and reopening it, the link is gone.

The workaround works only if you do [Lind description|<linkName>] in your template and not if you insert a link from the menu. (thought people would be interested to know this detail)

For RL and Jon: You made comments about SharePoint doing much better. Can you elaborate on this? As far as I've seen, the SharePoint wiki features aren't very good. We just upgraded to the latest Office 365 SharePoint and I played around with the wiki features and it doesn't seem like much has improved. It still seems far easier for me to create content quickly in Confluence. Now if I want to store Microsoft Office documents, SharePoint handles that better than Confluence. There are a bunch of other features in SharePoint, including wiki, but Microsoft has mostly ignored them, so much that they don't really seem that usable. I'm curious what you're finding in SharePoint. Maybe I'm missing something?

This is disappointing to see this bug had been open for 4 years...  For those not aware there is a workaround, it looks ugly when updating the template but works otherwise. Thank you to the person who posted the link to this open bug.  https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/269807/cannot-seem-to-create-a-template-with-anchors-and-internal-page-links-link

Thats pretty awful when sharepoint can do anything...Wow Atlassian fix this now I do not want to go to sharepoint.

Since it is unassigned, i don't think any of the Atlassian support ever watches or gets notified for this issue. I did already but no use.

Atlassian do not create templates so this is only an edge case for them.  And for all others go for other products. MS Sharepoint is doing far better than this.

Possibly if we can get all current 84 watchers to comment on this post it will get some increased visibility. I too am concerned this issue has been flagged as "edge case" as it obviously impacts all cloud users and there is no viable workaround. Please consider fixing this issue Atlassian!

I voted for this ticket the first time about 2 years ago. We still need this features: please prioritize this.

Us: "Guys, I've been on hold for five years now. Any updates? It seems like being able to link from one part of a template to another part of a template is a pretty basic essential part of what a template feature is for."

Them: "Nope, this is an edge case. Please continue holding and pretending we give a damn."

Them: "Hey guys, we've built you this awesome feature that lets you pre-build pages so you don't have to start from scratch every time"

Us: "Oh great, so you mean I can enter text and stuff?"

Them: "Yes you can!"

Us: "Awesome! So I can link from one part of the text to another part?"

Them: "...Uh. Please hold. Your expected wait time is approximately: five years."

This bug should be high priority. Not been able to create templates with anchor links defeats the purpose of using templates...

We use anchors pretty exclusively for "return to top" or "jump to this section of the page" type deals. It would be very nice if this was possible to recreate in templates. 

Agreed here: This has affected the way I need to make my templates and we are heavy users of templates in the consulting world. When designing templates we must constantly work-around this issue.

I see this was just classified as "10% - edge case or very hard to experience." I disagree. I can see that it may be prioritized as low because there's a workaround, but it's pretty easy to experience the problem. It seems pretty fundamental to me, not an edge case.

+1 Quite annoying and getting old. A fix would highly be appreciated.

"Feedback from the consumers is that it off-putting/disconcerting..." = understood and definitely concur.  Let's see a fix, please, Atlassian.

Workaround does work. Feedback from the consumers is that it off-putting/disconcerting i.e. folks who are using the templates that we create for them to do their work do not like seeing disconcerting messages spread over a page, and takes their focus of them do their job by just focusing on the content.

All please try the workaround... create a page containing the layout, formatting, and anchors you need for the template.  After saving the page, enter edit mode.  Copy/paste all content into a template you are creating.  Save the template.

The template will show "Broken Link" notices (where the anchor links are placed) if you go back to edit it.  A new page created in Confluence using the template will also show "Broken Link" notices before initially saving the page.

HOWEVER - once you save the page, the links and anchors will all be in place and working.

It is definitely a frustrating issue.  Still experiencing it here, as well.  Yes, it is an irritation.  But, the workaround is good and only a slight alteration of process to deal with (create Confluence page first, copy to template).  It's not a showstopper leaving you dead in the water!

Just came across this while creating templates. Quite frustrating.

+1

I don't understand why the issue is being downgraded. I work at a large company and not having this functionality could be a showstopper for using confluence. Anchoring tags to specific sections of a confluence template is highly important to us.

We have an on-premise installation and are affected by this issue; however, the workaround does work for us. Still, this bug has been identified for almost 4 years now and hasn't been fixed? I keep running into many Confluence bugs that have been reported years ago and never fixed. That's not encouraging.

This is not an issue with an on-prem installation. Is this a limitation by the team, similar to restricting users the ability to edit HTML directly?

Echoing the comment from @Jacob-Jan van der Spek, asking users to add this to EVERY page, EVERY time is too technical. We need a method for including this in the template.

2nd the previous remarks: we want to use the link to an anchor in a page for a bit of multi-language support. Manually adding the links after creating the pages (by multiple employees of our company) is too technical, so a solution within the template (where it should be), should be available.

Same here. Seems that neither the anchor link functionality nor the workaround work correctly. Very frustrating as it should be fairly basic functionality.

Using version 5.9.10.

Same issue also with one of the latest versions 5.8.18 and 5.9.10.

Very annoying to see that this hasn't been fixed for such a long time

See Karl Perry's 2014/03/07 Atlassian Answers comment at the following link for steps to recreate, screenshots, and workaround success description:
https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/269807/cannot-seem-to-create-a-template-with-anchors-and-internal-page-links-link

This issue is definitely still happening. Tried to update a template with a few anchors (anchors get created just fine), but when linking text on the page to the anchor "The markup provided is not valid link markup" message appears and the 'Insert' button remains greyed-out, preventing save.

Also discovered the workaround noted here - it is good... copied the anchor-linked text sections from an existing/saved page and pasted/inserted into the template. When you create a new page from the template and save it, the links and anchors work.

JUST A HEADS-UP for other users - when creating the new page from the template (prior to saving it), you will probably see a red-warning box with a "Broken Link" notice where the anchor links sit on the page. However, when the page is finally saved, the text/links and anchors work. Also, after saving the page and go back in to edit, the warning is gone.

I stumbled over this problem. An early solution would be helpful.

@Steve Haffenden, any update on this? Does it have a target date? This was filed in 2012. I think people deserve an answer, if not actual responsiveness to the issue from Atlassian.

This is a serious issue for my team also, we've tried the suggested workaround but on attempting to open these appear as broken links.. Please resolve

Also found this to be an issue. Will this be fixed soon?

What is the status of this issue, seems to be a big bug that has been asked quite some time ago. This affects us greatly and we cannot use confluence if I cannot design a template that has anchor links. Please fix asap.

Need this issue fixed soon. Multiple users are having this issue and with no work around right now this is a big problem.

Also 5.8.14 is affected.

Would love an update to this... Was really frustrated to find out this is an existing bug that isnt yet fixed... It is key to some templates we are creating

The workaround no longer works – we have valid use cases for this feature and would really appreciate a fix or a viable workaround.

Any news on this issue, it is very annoying!

fchan can we please get an update? This bug is annoying as hell and the workaround described above DOES NOT WORK!

Hi Can we have an update on this issue please? The work around is very annoying and time consuming and I don't think I will continue to use the product.

Also 5.8.*

Same issue on Confluence 5.7

Same issue on Confluence 5.5.6. Very annoying issue!!

Has this issue been prioritised?

This is real blocker on a key production doc. Can you give us an update on when a fix is planned? Thanks!

An unfortunate bug to a great feature of Confluence. Anchors are a basic element of web design, not being able to link to our Headings or Anchors is limiting! Thanks for listening!

Hi thomas.lorne

Thanks for getting in touch. The priority field is actually a measure of the technical severity of this issue. I believe that this issue is correctly set as a minor.

Regards
Steve Haffenden
Confluence Bugmaster
Atlassian

This is a blocking issue for us as well. Please adjust the priority accordingly.

In Confluence 5.3.4, I cannot use the workaround since the Insert Link Dialog will not actually insert the code New_Code_Base since it believes it is not valid.

Please advise.

I just raised this issue in support ticket CSP-124079 and was sent here to comment on this bug.

While the workaround does work, it is quite awkward. Atlassian dev team, please consider giving priority to this bug, so that it is resolved in an upcoming release of Confluence.

Thank you!

I second what Greg Williams said on 2/May.
We're using Confluence 5.5.2

Conf v.5.0.3

I've been asked to report this as well. The link does work once a page is created from the template, as reported above, but the 'broken link' will cause confusion when our staff use this template. Atlassian: A fix for this would be much appreciated.

Issue is still in Confluence 5.4.2
Work around is to reference the anchor [ # Anchor name ]. Creates a broken link but when you create the page using the template and saving the page. Then the links work

Still the same issue with Confluence 5.3.1

I am having the same issue with Confluence 5.2.5. The workaround suggested is only partly working for me.

I can copy and insert the link using the source editor. The WYSIWYG-Editor still reports a broken link with the additional message “a relative link cannot be marshalled without a ConversionContext containing a ContentEntityObject”. A user applying the template also sees the error of the broken link, but the links work in the created page.

So I can create correct pages, but the error message is very annoying and confusing for users. Are there any updates on this issue?

It's worth noting that I was not able to use the workaround suggested by the original reporter. I haven't found a suitable workaround yet.