link to anchor doesn't work

I added an anchor #thisanchor near the bottom of the page (with at least a page worth of text following it.)

I added the link near the top of the page. The unqualified link did NOT link to the same page. It added a bogus prefix URL when saved. So I added a fully qualified link for that same page where the link was inserted so it would link within the page.

when I hover over the link it says the right thing - "Go to link #thisanchor on this page".

But it doesn't do anything. The page does not move to the bottom anchor.

There is no TOC defined on this page.

The anchor only shows up in 'edit' mode as per design.

This is such a basic use of anchors and it doesn't work. Help!

Confluence 5.10.8

35 answers

4 votes

I can't believe this problem still exist!

PLS FIX! :-S

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Comment

3 votes

Just wanted to flag that anchors still don't work. It'd be *really* great if they did.

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Comment

2 votes

I am on here looking for help with the anchors as well. Every time I edit the pages to add new content, I must go and repair all of my anchors to remove the extra text that pops in the anchor and causes an error on the page. Can you assign someone to work with us to fix? I am not on old version and I know better than try to use a plug in.

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Comment

2 votes

Made my day...

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Comment

2 votes

Seriously? This was reported over 2 years ago, and it's not even a complex subject. Imagine how long it must take them to address real issues.

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Comment

2 votes

Apparently in Confluence the real anchor name = #page name-anchor name.

So link to http://yada.yada.yada/page name#page name-anchor name

That's how I got it working.

Not sure if that is intentional on Atlassians part - it's wonky but functional

Also I attached it to a block element -- like a table header...

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Comment

2 votes

I am no longer working at the company that used Confluence. The tool had a smattering of "experts" around my company. I consulted with all of them at the time and it was a limitation/defect of Confluence and was never resolved before leaving the company. In principle, Confluence is a great tool. Unfortunately with the number of significant glitches and oversights and missing functionality, adoption rate was limited and most pages are simple text files preventing a great deal of promise suggested by the tool.

Sorry I can't be helpful. The tool is broken.

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Comment

1 vote

I just want to thank @Steffen Heller and his post above on July 27, 2018 for helping me understand this. I came here frustrated like others but found the answer in his replies.

I created an anchor called #bottom which I added to the bottom of my wiki page.

I attempted to test it using this URL

https://wiki.RRR.edu/confluence/display/HMDC/IQSS+Engineering+Reporting#bottom.

That did not help. I got frustrated. I read the post. I then tried.

https://wiki.RRR.edu/confluence/display/HMDC/IQSS+Engineering+Reporting#IQSSEngineeringReporting-bottom

This worked. Now I understand.

Thanks

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Comment

1 vote

Almost a decade later [feels like two decades]] and "Anchor" links are still not working.
If it is working where do I prep for this [nuclear science level] how to use knowledge?

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Comment

1 vote

I'm flabbergasted that Atlassian think it's acceptable that users have to follow these instruction **just to get a link to an anchor on a wiki page**! Incredible! I have a glossary page where I'd like a link to every gloassary item, but there's no way in the world that I'm crafting 100+ URLs like this. Appaling.

--------------

Link to an anchor from another web page or another Confluence site:

Use a full URL in the following format:

Link syntax

Examples
http://myconfluence.com/display/spacekey/pagename#pagename-anchorname

http://myconfluence.com/display/DOCS/My+page#Mypage-bottom

http://myconfluence.com/display/DOCS/My+page#Mypage-importantinformation

Notes about the full URL:

The page name is repeated in the URL, after the # sign. The second occurrence of the page name is concatenated into a single word, with all spaces removed.
There is a single dash (hyphen) between the concatenated page name and the anchor name.
The anchor name in the full URL is concatenated into a single word, with all spaces removed.
The anchor name is case sensitive.
If the page name contains special characters, where the URL displays a page ID rather than a name, the link to an anchor will look more like this http://myconfluence.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=54689987#Test-page1!-anchor
In this example the page title is Test - Page 1! and the anchor name is anchor.

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Comment

1 vote

Here's a solution that works:

Embed an HTML macro where you want your anchor
Add the following inside the HTML box: <a id="my-anchor"></a>
Save the page
Now link to your page using any of the usual methods (title-based url, shared-url, page-id url) and add #my-anchor to the end
Rename my-anchor in both places to match whatever you need it to be

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Comment

1 vote

@Tatyana I don't have any idea why Atlassian decided to make anchors work the way they do. I agree that forcing a page reload to go to a link on the same page is poor behavior. Sometimes, building a page from SQL requests or other external resources is expensive and slow.

I've decided to simply use the HTML macro when I want normal link behavior.

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Comment

1 vote

@Steffen Heller

Exactly - it automatically inserts #mypage in front of "section1". If I link to "section 1" it does not work.

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Comment

1 vote

So, if you create a link to "#mypage-section1" it does work? But a link to "'section1" does not work? Is that what you tried?

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Comment

1 vote

This isn't my first rodeo. That's the first thing I did was read the documentation. It's a bug. My company admin can request support from Atlassian support. The issue is still open.

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Comment

0 votes

If the link name has spaces, you have to remove them.

R24.11 is the page name, used twice.

MY Special Instructions << is the anchor name with spaces which have to be removed in the link. I didn't try %20 but that might work.

https://confluence.XXX.COM/display/enrollrm/R24.11#R24.11-MYSpecialInstructions

steve_dunn's answer in this thread has more details on this and other things.

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Comment

0 votes

Doesn't work any more as the HTML macro isn't available (at least not in my installation at work (could be configuration, could be a bug, could be that they couldn't be arsed to maintain it - who knows!))

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Comment

0 votes

Incredible that they actually charge money for this product!

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Comment

0 votes

I'm flabbergasted that Atlassian think it's acceptable that users have to follow the instructions below **just to get a link to an anchor on a wiki page**! Incredible! I have a glossary page where I'd like a link to every gloassary item, but there's no way in the world that I'm manually crafting 100+ URLs like this. Appaling.

--------------

Link to an anchor from another web page or another Confluence site:

Use a full URL in the following format:

Link syntax

Examples
http://myconfluence.com/display/spacekey/pagename#pagename-anchorname

http://myconfluence.com/display/DOCS/My+page#Mypage-bottom

http://myconfluence.com/display/DOCS/My+page#Mypage-importantinformation

Notes about the full URL:

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Comment

0 votes

If none of the solutions work for you, and your confluence is a bit old your problem might be that you had this old plugin installed Confluence Iphone plugin.

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-20319