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Suggestion
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Resolution: Unresolved
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NOTE: This suggestion is for Confluence Server. Using Confluence Cloud? See the corresponding suggestion.
There has been much said about how difficult anchors are to use, because of the esoteric syntax (see the comments in the Anchors page), especially as it relates to anchors linking to target pages different from the source page ... or, say, sending a colleague an email with a URL anchor link to your page.
The syntax often recommended by Atlassian tech writers is:
http://myconfluence.com/display/spacekey/pagename#pagename-anchorname
...but there are problems/bugs with this syntax:
- this breaks for pages that begin with a number (e.g., the very commonly used "2015-04-04 Meeting Notes" naming convention) ... in actuality, you need to use the "id-" prefix after the hash symbol, if the page name begins with a number
- the #pagename-anchorname part of that syntax actually needs to be #pagenameWithSpacesRemoved-anchorname; which is poorly documented, poorly understood by most users, and leaves the anchor link susceptible to broken links if the page is subsequently renamed
- the syntax is so convoluted, that anchors are unusable for our users, making anchors not a collaborative gadget tool, but a gadget only for developers or Confluence administrators.
- is resolved by
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- Gathering Interest
- relates to
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- Gathering Interest
| Form Name | |||||||||||
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[CONFSERVER-36940] Anchor syntax is so difficult to use, our users cannot use anchors
Created: 18/Mar/2015 9:08 PM Updated: 13/Dec/2022 9:02 PM
How long do we need to deal with this issue in a very basic/core functionality?
@a056a4ba8e2d : I would respectfully disagree. This behavior is completely independent of Jira usage.
Dear Atlassians!
Please look into this and its associated topics.
User experience with anchors and links to anchors or other parts in a page (e.g. as a reference from a Jira issues) is a real catastrophe.
Also make links to anchors working for tiny urls and page-id urls too!
Create better search capabilities to select the correct targets (anchors).
Confluence is so powerful, however, so many problems around this basic functionality drives people crazy and it appears that you don't hear us on this for years!
Agree...need ability to link to specific anchor in a confluence document from a Jira issue. I have one spec document and I create multiple tasks, so I want to link the tasks from Jira to the appropriate location in the confluence spec doc where that task is described without the developer having to scroll down to find the task.
4 years later and still "gathering interest" gives me very little hope this will ever change. I don't even understand what's the reason for the current design. It seems so much more work than a plain anchor without the page name.
I completely agree with OP. Additionally, a link to anchors next to headings would be amazing (similar to Wikipedia and many other). Right now, I have to generate table of content just to grab the convoluted anchor. Or create anchor macro if I want to link to a heading on the same page (because I cannot choose a heading in the create link dialog).
Just add a way to, from the anchor, get the self link (like share anchor or something).
From my point of view a basic set of anchors should be established automatically in any Confluence document. All the headers should have an available anchor that could be used in any Jira issue to highlight the reference to particular part in a doc. This will solve 70-80% of the problems . Creation of more specific anchors (for a particular phrase) should be supported of course, but the basic and persistent set has to be available for the users.
Hi
It doesn't work in a dahboard Jira
I want to create some links in a first gadget on the top of my dashboard that links to another gadgets on the same page.
How can I do ?