Is THIS how Confluence cross-references are supposed to work?

[davis_smith]

Somehow, though my almost 2 years of working with Confluence, I've avoided creating links. Today (actually last Friday), that changed. I'm trying to create a link that, as with any other document-creation app I've used in 29 years as a tech writer, should work without delay.

When I click the Confluence link I just created, the program waits two full seconds before taking me to the start of the page where it waits approximately five seconds more. Then it takes me to the anchor. So, yes; the link works...almost ten seconds after the user clicks it.

This was my cross-reference creation process:

• Set the anchor
• Name the anchor
• Copy the link at the anchor
• Highlight the text I want to be the in-document link
• Press Ctrl-K
• Paste the link into the Search or paste a link box
• Click Insert
• Select Update without notifying watchers (they don't need to know I'm trying to figure out Confluence...)
• Click Edit
• I've been working though the steps as I've been writing the explanation and now the link doesn't work at all.

What am I doing wrong?

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Hey @davis_smith ,

I mean, the loading times will mainly depend on your device and Internet speed. If you're pasting a link to another page, it will take some time for the browser to open a new/linked page, load all network traffic and data, and actually display it.

Now, Confluence works in a way that it will initially open the page (at the top), and then, if you have an anchor or just a link to a section, it will auto-scroll to that area only when the whole page loads. That's why you see that second delay, which, again, also depends on the device performance and the network speed. ⏱️

Usually, anchor links will look like this:

https://<sitename>.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/<KEY>/pages/<page-ID>/<page-name>#<anchor-name>

Anyway, when you try to open that anchor link you've got (just paste it in the address bar), what do you see in your browser?

Note that apart from that, you can use heading links and these also work quite well. 👀

Cheers,
Tobi

[davis_smith]

Hi @Tomislav Tobijas,

Thanks, I'll check it out. I work remotely and the local infrastructure is shaky (on its good days). Still, I had never seen that particular behavior in over a year of working with Confluence. My first impulse was to see if I had made any missteps.

Best,

Davis