How do I stop Confluence from automatically changing URLs into link previews
Asked by Peter Willis:

When I type in <https://www.example.com/> in confluence, in a few seconds the text changes to "Example" with a link.

I don't want it to convert URLs to text automatically. I don't want Confluence to grab the title of the page and change how the link looks. I want it to show the entire URL that I typed. If I want to change how it looks, I will click the Link button and add text to it.

Please someone tell me how to turn off this new functionality??? I have to keep clicking these links and selecting "Show URL" every time, it's such a pain!


Answers:
author: Steve Pate
body: On a Mac, let it expand and then hit CMD+z and it will just display the URL

comments: author: Kalin U
body: Same on Windows: Ctrl+Z should undo the automatic URL conversion.


author: Rob Hartwig
body: It's now available to disable from this settings page!!!

<https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/link-preferences>

comments: author: Wesley Smith
body: Thanks Yoda...worked like a charm. Productivity restored. Quite possibly the smallest BIG problem introduced to a product primarily targeted toward developers;). Party on everyone.


author: Ben L
body: This is now fixed! Hallelujah ;-)

ref. <https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-67922>, but tl'dr: set your user preference at <https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/link-preferences>


author: Mark Eklund
body: One workaround I've found is to use the markdown backticks. It isn't perfect because it formats \`<https://www.example.com>\` differently and doesn't hyperlink it at all.


author: Aron Gombas _Midori_
body: As far as I know this feature is called [smart links](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-articles/Smart-Links-a-richer-way-to-hyperlink/ba-p/1412786).

Disabling it is not possible yet, but here is the [corresponding issue](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-67922) with a couple of workaround ideas. You may want to vote and watch that issue.

comments: author: EP
body: This is such a frustrating feature. We encounter it in Service Desk mostly, and it serves no purpose but to confuse communication to customers. Thanks for the link!


author: Daniel Wal
body: Agreed. Just another "feature" of Confluence that makes my life more difficult. I have to click Ctrl+Z every time I paste a URL into a page. Drives me bonkers.


author: Youssri
body: It's not ideal but can do a clean up and bulk convert smartlinks to regular URLs using this [link editor app](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1227360/link-editor-by-easy-apps?hosting=cloud&tab=overview).


author: Dieter Rausch
body: Smart Links are not compatible with the MS Teams pluign "Jira Cloud" - all you get is a "Unsupported inlineCard" notice. Like that, the plugin is totally useless!!  

It MUST be possible for the READER to disable the display of Smart Links by all means - not only for plugin compatibility. An Author (or however you call it) should NEVER be able to ++force++ masked URLs in messages or issues!


author: Liz Lomax
body: I have a similar issue, where Confluence is resolving text that isn't a URL, into links to external websites.

Example: I have a tracking ID that is "BUD.TC" and Confluence insists on resolving this to be the Budweiser Turks \& Caicos website! Which is funny but entirely inappropriate.

I have changed my link preferences, so it now shows the text as typed, but it is still inserting a link to the website.

Is there a way to tell Confluence not to automatically link things at all?


author: edelwater
body: This is hyper annoying

I paste in spreadsheet as tables , then have to wait for how long "server lost connection" and then all the urls are icons with "home" which does not say that much.

comments: author: Matthew Allen
body: Trying to work around this myself. Software is trying to be too smart for itself. Make it an option, please. Confluence is prefixing my data with "http://". Totally inappropriate when trying to document DNS records.

And c'mon, it's not even https...


author: Adam Mlodzinski
body: I found that I can paste a block of text that includes one or more words (sequence of characters excluding whitespace) that Confluence sees as URLs using "Command+Shift+D".

The full keyboard-only sequence becomes "Command+Shitf+D, Command+V, Tab, Enter", which is a lot more than simply "Command+V", but it's better than having to use the mouse to Unlink potentially dozens or hundreds of words that look like links. Thankfully the dialog that pops up is keyboard friendly.


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud