Adding a link in Jira to a Confluence Anchor
Asked by Julien S?n?cal:

I'm currently trying to add a link in Jira that's pointing to an anchor in Confluence. It doesn't seem to work since it's simply going to the page without scrolling to the anchor.

I've added the anchor using the macro in Confluence and the syntaxe used for the url in Jira is the following <https://xyz.com/display/MNM/Modules+Pages#InstagramFeed>

Do you have any idea why it's not pointing to the anchor?


Answers:
author: AnnWorley
body: I understand you are new to the forum. Welcome. :)

When you link to a Confluence anchor from another Confluence instance or from Jira you have to repeat the page name in the URL - it is not particularly intuitive, I am afraid.

Please see:

[Link to an anchor from another web page or another Confluence site:](https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/anchors-139442.html#Anchors-Step2Step2:Createalinktotheanchor)
> Use a full URL in the following format:  
>
> |-------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
> | <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`.

comments: author: Peter Kindzierski
body: Hey Ann, this horrible!!!  
Did nobody file for a bug or an enhancement request yet regarding this Confluence-issue ?


author: AnnWorley
body: Thanks for asking! Yes, there is an issue open: [Anchor syntax is so difficult to use, our users cannot use anchors](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-36940)

Here is the article on how we implement suggestions: [Implementation of New Features Policy](https://confluence.atlassian.com/support/implementation-of-new-features-policy-201294576.html)


author: Travis Barrett
body: I have no idea why, but when I use the anchor links (described in this article), it only works in Edge. In Chrome, it doesn't go to the anchor, just the top of the page.


author: Jan Mejor
body: Same.


author: Barton Friedland
body: It works for me in Chrome


author: Jens Bernhardt
body: Doesn't work for me in Chrome


author: fbunting
body: Another problem with this is that even when the anchor link works, it doesn't go to the correct location -- it ends up scrolling a few lines *below* the anchor. For example, if you place the anchor just above a heading, it scrolls to the line below the heading (so you can't see that you have linked to the correct location). Or if you place the anchor just above a paragraph, it links to the third of fourth line of the paragraph (and the reader has to scroll up a couple of lines to start reading).  

Oddly, this does not happen when you link to an anchor *on the same page* . Then it works perfectly.  

I filed another question on this topic: <https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Bug-Linking-to-an-anchor-behaves-differently-when-linking-from/qaq-p/915669>


author: David Fenstermacher
body: I have a similar issue. The anchor is at the top of the page. When one clicks on a link pointed to it further down in the document, The page scrolls up to about 4 lines below the Anchor position. One has to manually scroll the rest of the way up.

The only work around I have found is to add 4 blank lines between the top anchor and the table of contents macro. So, that the full table of contents will totally show up when the below link is clicked.

Any thoughts on what would cause the link to not scroll completely up to the anchor location?


author: ssides
body: I think that is a browser issue. It happens with Chrome but not in Firefox..at least in (very) limited testing. Paste the same link to an anchor or heading from TOC into Chrome and Firefox and even Safari. It only goes a line too far in Chrome. :/


author: Phillip Molaro
body: So in general this works for me. If I copy my Confluence page URL, copy the name part from the end, remove the + signs and prepend that to my #anchor at the end, and use that as a link in my Jira ticket's description, it works. The page loads and takes about 1-2 seconds to pop into place but it works.

However, Jira is also automatically adding a link from the same page in the "mentions by" links area lower down, bc I have also the ticket number in the Confluence page as well. While I can delete that and add my own link it does NOT seem to take or use the URL with the correct anchor. I pasted it in and when I then click it it opens the confluence page but doesn't pop down to my anchor, like the regular description link does.

So for now I'm just manually putting links in the description, but it would be super nice if the auto-link would either auto anchor to the first instance of the ticket number on the page, or allow me to append an anchor someway.


author: david
body: I get the link to an anchor to work perfectly if I paste the URL into the browser. When I use the same link in a story in JIRA it just takes me to the backlog that story is in? Any ideas


Tags: jira

anchor

link