anchors gone??
Asked by Kai:

I can't believe Atlassian really chose to remove Anchors and within-page links. Tell me this is a bad joke or you have supplied an adequate alternative.

Even pure HTML offers this feature. And you think it's not necessary? Come. On. !


Answers:
author: Dominic Lagger
body: Hi [@Kai](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2095150)

I can understand your resentment. I try to help you with all information I can find.

The anchor macro is gone, that's right. You can find this on the roadmap of the new editor. Also there is a link to the ticket, which is closed:

* [New Editor Roadmap](https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/confluence-cloud-editor-roadmap-967314556.html)
* [CONFCLOUD-66773](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-66773)

But you can still use anchors in a little bit different way and only on headings. here is the documentation of using anchors in the new editor:

* [Insert Links and Anchors in the new Editor](https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/insert-links-and-anchors-724764900.html#InsertLinksandAnchors-neweditor)

Here is an extract:
> **Link to a heading on a page or another page**
>
> Heading links use a combination of the three character space identifier and the page ID along with the page name and header name.
>
> If you only need to get the URL that takes viewers to a heading, do the following:
>
> 1. Navigate to the page and scroll down to the heading.
>
> 2. Hover over the heading to reveal the link icon to the left of the heading.
>
> 3. Click the link icon to copy the link.
>
> 4. Navigate to and edit the page where you want to link to the heading.
>
> 5. Paste the URL in the link tool pop-up, and give it a more friendly name if desired.
>
> If you need to create several links to headings on a page, it's more efficient to get the page URL and construct the heading portion yourself.
>
> 1. Navigate to and view the page containing the heading.
>
> 2. Copy the page URL for future use. Keep in mind that the page URL capitalization must match the page title capitalization. Spaces in the page title are replaced with a plus ( + ).
>
> 3. Make note of all the exact headings that to which you want to link.
>
> 4. Navigate to and edit the page where you want to link to the headings.
>
> 5. Paste the page URL in the link tool pop-up, add the page heading title, and give it a more friendly name if desired. Keep in mind that the heading part of the URL must match the capitalization of the page heading. Spaces in the heading title are replaced with a hyphen ( - ).
>
> 6. Repeat Step 6 until you've created all the heading links needed.

I hope this helps a little bit.

Regards, Dominic

comments: author: Sakrayaami_S
body: The first part with the link to the heading is the most confusing thing in the world!!!  
If you edit a page this hover functionality doesn't work, and you hover and hover ... You need to first save the page and view it in a non edit mode in order to get the Hover functionality and be able to copy the header.   

Removing the Anchor functionality is really aggressive and problematic, I hope there will be some improvements in the Link ui functionality.


author: Breton Tillinghast
body: What about when I want to add an anchor somewhere that's not a heading? Or a smaller heading? There's a tiny sub-section bullet I'm trying to link to.


author: Kai
body: I haven't tried your solution yet, but what I can tentatively say right away - simply counting the steps I have to take - is that you're simplifying your product (yes, I have read and understood the rationale for removal of the anchor plugin) at the cost of reduced usability and therefore customer satisfaction. This shouldn't happen.


author: Ste Wright
body: Hi [@Kai](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2095150) , [@Breton Tillinghast](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2649503)

One option I have found (which still uses headers) is to:

1. Create a title - such as "Anchor 1" somewhere on the page
2. Make it Header 6 (the smallest one)
3. Make the text in the anchor the same as the background of your page

\^ This way, you can add an anchor somewhere on the page without it utilising too much space. I appreciate this isn't an absolute solution but it does allow for some of the needed functionality.

There are suggestions to enhance the new editor with anchors - see [CONFCLOUD-69198](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-69198) which is a newer, open suggestion.

Alternatively you might still be able to request use of the legacy editor - [see this article](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-Cloud-articles/Change-to-your-content-is-in-your-hands/ba-p/1324476) - or if you have an older page which uses the legacy editor, you can copy it to create a new page where you can continue to use the old anchor macro.

Ste


Tags: anchor

cloud