How to make a page reference itself as an outgoing link
Asked by Mark Rincon:

Pages created before I got here (and only a handful) show in their page information an outgoing link that references itself. This allows forms from other pages to locate them and access data in them. Any new page I create will not create an outgoing link for itself. I am a new admin, and have been researching this ad nauseum. I can add html links no problem etc, but the page shown below (right) has no html links and the way it references itself is not in the code as I have deleted all code (to check) and the outgoing link for itself still remains. The below left page is a new one that I want an outgoing link for. I am guessing it is something ridiculous I have missed in settings or in page creation. Thanks.

confluence page info.png  
[](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/How-to-make-a-page-reference-itself-as-an-outgoing-link/qaq-p/63137?attachment-id=5793){#link_11860172bd1c83}  
[](/tnckb94959/attachments/tnckb94959/confluence-questions/10697/1/confluence%20page%20info.png){#display_11860172bd1c83_0}


Answers:
author: Mark Rincon
body: Found the actual issue to be a permissions issue. Pages that were able to be seen through field definitions were pages that were "public" through our WIKI. I had incorrectly conflated the 'outgoing links' page as the tool that allowed this function. Since we wanted the page to remain non public as a data page it had to be kept anonymous. I was able to bypass this by referencing the page ID of my data page (department list) and the form data associated with it in the open source editor (html). Learn something new every day.


author: Sam Hall
body: Hi Mark,

This is tricky one to answer. I could be way off the mark, so apologies if I am, but here goes:

Are you sure your "HR 7 Tenets Goals FY16-17" page doesn't have a subtle link to itself somewhere in the content on the page?

It might not be easy to spot if someone has changed the font colour. It will only show if you hover the mouse over. For example:

subtle-link.jpg

One way to check might be to "View Storage Format" on the page a look for any \<ac:link\> tags:

view-storage-format.jpg

Out of interest, why do you want your "Department List" page info to show a link to itself.

It's not immediatly obvious to me what you'd achieve with that, so let me know if I am missing something!

Hope this helps a bit.

Sam  
[](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/How-to-make-a-page-reference-itself-as-an-outgoing-link/qaq-p/63137?attachment-id=9430){#link_11860181d20aed}  
[](/tnckb94959/attachments/tnckb94959/confluence-questions/10698/1/subtle-link.jpg){#display_11860181d20aed_0}  
[](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/How-to-make-a-page-reference-itself-as-an-outgoing-link/qaq-p/63137?attachment-id=9431){#link_11860181d20aed_0}  
[](/tnckb94959/attachments/tnckb94959/confluence-questions/10698/2/view-storage-format.jpg){#display_11860181d20aed_2}

comments: author: Mark Rincon
body: Sam, after another couple hours of trial and error in the code I have found that adding any image file will activate the pages outgoing link function; however, I incorrectly guessed that this would make the page visible to other pages to reference.

To answer your question it is not showing the link to itself, but to all other pages. If I create a department list in a page that will not be made accessible to anyone, but admin then in the multitude of pages we have planned that require a department list I can reference the form \& table in "Department List" page and not have to build multiple databases of the same information.

For example I created a small dept list database in "HR 7 Tenets Goals FY16-17" and referenced it in the page I have put together and the drop down object was able to find the "HR 7 Tenets Goals FY16-17" page just fine and the data within the form. The hunt continues for what makes some pages visible when trying to access their data as opposed to others. Thank you.


Tags: confluence-administration