How can you find and monitor all references in the form of urls and links to an anchor
Asked by Cheryl:

How can you find and monitor all references in the form of urls and links to an anchor


Answers:
author: Shannon S
body: Cheryl,

Can you help clarify what it is you're looking to do exactly? It will help if you include your usage case.

Regards,

Shannon

comments: author: v.krajczar
body: Hi Shannon,

I think Cheryl is/was dealing with the same issue as I am right now. Basically what I?d like to see is?all the reference point to a specific anchor I created.

e.g.: There?s an anchor on a page, let?s call it TestAnchor. I?d like to see a list of all the exact points in the workspace which are referencing to the TestAnchor, and not only the pages, but the exact location of a reference to TestAnchor on the page. So basically e.g. before deleting an anchor, I?d like to check all the exact points which are linked to this anchor.

Thank you!

Viktor


author: Shannon S
body: Hi Viktor,

Thank you for clarifying this.

We had a feature request to include anchors in incoming links in Confluence, but was closed in Server as we don't have plans to include this on the roadmap in the near future. The Cloud request is still open at this time:

* [CONFCLOUD-41717](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-41717) *Anchor macro links not displayed as incoming Links in confluence*
* [CONFSERVER-41717](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-41717) (Same as above, but for Server)

There's no feature for that, but I know of an add-on that does this for links to pages. I wasn't able to find details on whether it also supports anchors on the pages, but have a look here:

* [Linking for Confluence](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/166/linking-for-confluence?hosting=cloud&tab=support)

I hope this is helpful, but let me know if you have any further questions.

Regards,

Shannon


author: v.krajczar
body: Hi Shannon,

Thank you for the response.

May I ask the reason, why it is not planned to be implemented? What could I do to help change your mind?

Because without being able to see the links to an anchor, it?s just useless/dangerous. Especially that even renaming an anchor breaks all the links to it (not to mention, that it is possible to create unlimited anchors with the same name on a page! --\> In this case, based on what logic the system decides which one to link to?)

Thank you,

Viktor


author: Shannon S
body: Hi Viktor,

The reason, as stated on the request:
> Thank you for raising this suggestion. We regret to inform you that due to limited demand, we have no plans to implement it in the foreseeable future. In order to set expectations, we're closing this request now. Sometimes potentially valuable tickets do get closed where the Summary or Description has not caught the attention of the community. If you feel that this suggestion is valuable, consider describing in more detail or outlining how this request will help you achieve your goals. We may then be able to provide better guidance. Thanks again.  
> Regards,  
> Confluence Product Management

You can see from the request that we only had a single vote over a period of 1.5 years, so it was closed by product management due to lack of interest.

If you are interested in this feature specifically for Server (since the Cloud request is still open), you are welcome to raise a new feature request. You can do so via jira.atlassian.com by clicking the **Create** button at the top of the page. Feature requests are added according to our [Implementation of New Features Policy](https://confluence.atlassian.com/support/implementation-of-new-features-policy-201294576.html), so feel free to read through that for more details on how you can influence a feature to be accepted.

Regards,

Shannon


Tags: anchor

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