How do I create a link to a page that doesn't exist yet?
Asked by Joni:

Before this new "improved" Confluence, I could create a link to not-yet-exiting page on the fly, and create that page after I had finished editing the parent page. This technique is called 'Representational state transfer' (REST) -\> one can statelessly link to a resource whose existence (=state) is not known.

How do I do that now? Confluence editor only gives me a drop-down list of existing pages and does not accept a new link text instead. If I try writing a new link and press enter, the editor just discards the changes and no link is created.


Answers:
author: Shannon S
body: Hi Joni,

Thank you for contacting us about this.

This feature was known as "Undefined Page links" and while they're not yet possible in the new editor, they are mentioned in our roadmap below:

* [Confluence Cloud Editor Roadmap](https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/confluence-cloud-editor-roadmap-967314556.html)

This feature is currently in our short-term backlog, and you can track its progress here:

* [CONFCLOUD-67129](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-67129) *Link to an undefined page (a page that doesn't exist yet)*

There is a workaround listed there, which is:
> As this is not a native feature in the new editor for now, we can keep using our undefined links by opening them on a new tab (right-clicking over the link and selecting this option, or CTRL + Right Click / COMMAND + Right Click).
>
> To insert an undefined link on a page with the new editor, create a link with this address:
>
> ```
> https://SITE_NAME.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/createpage.action?spaceKey=SPACEKEY?
> ```

Let me know if you have any trouble or questions about that.

Regards,

Shannon

comments: author: Chris
body: After a page is created using this workaround, the source page doesn't update to point at the new page, instead the page may be created multiple times over if different people click on that link to follow it.

Fortunately there is an actual working workaround now: <https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-articles/Link-to-undefined-placeholder-pages/ba-p/1412785>


author: Sheer Pullen
body: This is a \*extremely\* important feature and a horrible thing to break. For all my personal projects in the future I will be using mediawiki, so you might want to take making this work correctly more seriously. Is there any way to switch back to the old editor for all pages?


author: Aaron Bernstein
body: [@Shannon S](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/510046) what is the current status of this? it seems that using the \`createpage.action\` url that you suggested will always create a new page, even if one with the specified title already exists


author: German Rincon
body: This feature was already released for the new editor. You can use ***\[undefined content\]()*** to make it happen. One down, One thousand to go, or at least that is how it feels sometimes with the new editor. ;-)

comments: author: Nikhil Owalekar
body: Has this now been removed from the "new" editor ? The above syntax does nothing.


author: Carlos LHG
body: I have always used this method, in this form **\[** +**Title of the page** +**\]** +**(** +**)**

without space, them enter.


author: David Hernandez
body: I have the same question, but this approach **creates the page**when you click on it.

In my case, i frequently GENERAte documentation pages. and I have links between these documentation pages. Because the title of the page is known in advance, I can create a link to the page, even if the page has not yet been created.

I could do this easily when we were on the server, by using the display URL  
<https://confluence.mycompany.com/display/SPACE/page+title>  

However, when we moved to the cloud, all the existing links were converted to the format:  
<https://mycompany.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SPACE/pagenumber/page+title>  

So I can no longer generate a link to a page that will be created later by a program with a known page title.  

This breaks 90% of my automated documentation generation work. I'm going to have to make time to go figure this out now.. If anyone knows how to write a URL to a non-existing page and NOT have it \<create a page\> when you click on it \[just let it say 404 -not found\] .. I'd very much like to know.   

I actually don't care if it's "pretty", although I do like it better when the page number is not in the URL   


author: Aaron Bernstein
body: [@David Hernandez](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/631648) you can still use the display URL for this, at <https://mycompany.atlassian.net/wiki/display/SPACE/Page+Title>


author: Neuromancer
body: Content removed and posted in a more appropriate place


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud