nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

How to render excerpts on the same line as the link

Dean Hewson

The default for displaying excerpts using the filter-by-label macro (previously named "content-by-label") used to be "in-line," meaning the excerpts Confluence displayed would appear beside the links (which is the same as the way excerpts appear when using the content-tree/page-tree macro). For some time now, those excerpts appear below the links as a separate paragraph. This issue was raised in a previous ticket,

https://community.atlassian.com/forums/discussion/1195822/text-following-page-excerpt-is-not-a-separate-paragraph

Do we now have a workaround for this, so the excerpts appear beside the links and pages look consistent (and much more readable) no matter what macro renders the excerpts?

Accepted answers

nishant tyagi

Thanks for the screenshots, Dean, that makes it clear. And fair point: with Page Properties already doing your status and ownership reporting, and the excerpts already written, touching hundreds of pages isn't worth it.

Two options that leave your pages as they are:

Report it to Atlassian Support as a rendering change, as Tobi suggested, and attach these two screenshots. The side-by-side with the content-tree macro is exactly what they need to tell a regression from a deliberate change. If they say it's by design, a suggestion on jira.atlassian.com (Confluence Cloud project) gives others with the same problem a place to vote.
If the inline layout matters mainly on a few key index pages, a small custom macro could list pages by label and show each existing excerpt beside its link, reusing what you already have. Happy to outline how that would work if it's useful (disclosure: I build Atlassian Forge apps).

Tomislav Tobijas

@Dean Hewson cheers for the screenshots! I've managed to replicate this 👍 and I agree it's not ideal.

As it bothered me as well 😅 I've raised an official support ticket to see what the support team will have to say about it 👀
If they create a new suggestion/tracker, I'll let you know here.

Cheers,
Tobi

All comments

Tomislav Tobijas

Hey @Dean Hewson ,

That's a bit of an older thread you're looking at 👀 Any chance you can visualize (use a dummy example) what you're trying to achieve?

As far as I'm aware, the Filter by label macro doesn't currently provide an option to display excerpts inline with page links. 🤔

Since you mentioned that this worked differently before, I'd suggest reaching out to Atlassian Support to confirm whether this is an intentional change or a regression.

Cheers,
Tobi

nishant tyagi

Hi Dean, adding to Tobi's answer: if what you need is a consistent look wherever the summary appears, here's a workaround that doesn't depend on how the excerpt macro renders.

On each page, put the one-line summary in a Page Properties macro as a small two-column table (e.g. a row headed "Summary").
Give those pages a label.
On the index page, use the Page Properties Report macro filtered by that label. It lists one row per page, with the page title and the Summary column side by side.

It means editing each page once, but title and summary always sit on the same row, whatever the other macros do, and the table sorts and filters too.

If you have hundreds of pages, say roughly how many and whether the excerpts already exist, and I can think through a lighter way.

Dean Hewson

Thank you both for your comments. I appreciate your insights and workarounds.

As you suggested, here's a visualization where the excerpts, in red brackets, appear below the link when Confluence generates them from the filter-by-label macro and one when Confluence generates links from a content-tree macro (where the excerpts appear beside the links).

Filter-by-Label Example

Content Tree Example

I also love the Page Properties idea! Thanks for that. Unfortunately, that's not practical as I already use Page Properties on most pages for tracking and reporting on page status, ownership, and more. And manually moving the text of each excerpt to a different macro on hundreds of pages doesn't make sense. Besides, doing so would then break the excerpts in the content-tree macros wouldn't have excerpts. 🙂

nishant tyagi

Two options that leave your pages as they are:

Report it to Atlassian Support as a rendering change, as Tobi suggested, and attach these two screenshots. The side-by-side with the content-tree macro is exactly what they need to tell a regression from a deliberate change. If they say it's by design, a suggestion on jira.atlassian.com (Confluence Cloud project) gives others with the same problem a place to vote.
If the inline layout matters mainly on a few key index pages, a small custom macro could list pages by label and show each existing excerpt beside its link, reusing what you already have. Happy to outline how that would work if it's useful (disclosure: I build Atlassian Forge apps).

Tomislav Tobijas

@Dean Hewson cheers for the screenshots! I've managed to replicate this 👍 and I agree it's not ideal.

As it bothered me as well 😅 I've raised an official support ticket to see what the support team will have to say about it 👀
If they create a new suggestion/tracker, I'll let you know here.

Cheers,
Tobi

Tomislav Tobijas

@Dean Hewson here we go: CONFCLOUD-85398: Filter by Label macro — Add option to display Excerpt preview inline

Welcome!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Quick Links

Find more posts tagged with

confluence-cloud

excerpt

formatting

filter-by-label