Confluence Macros Made Simple

[#1]

If you’ve ever felt like your Confluence page looked a little… plain, macros are here to save the day! 🎉 They’re small tools that can make your pages more useful, interactive, and easier to read. Here are a few of my favorite macros (and some ideas on when to use them):

---

Table of Contents: 

This one automatically creates a mini navigation based on the headings on your page.
Super handy when your page is on the longer side.

💡 Best for: project documentation, knowledge base articles, or any “wall of text” page.

---

Page Properties & Page Properties Report

Think of this as adding little bits of “structured data” to your page (like status, owner, or due date). Then you can roll those up into a neat report across multiple pages.

💡 Best for: tracking projects, building a team directory, or showing OKRs in one place.

---

Task Report

If you’re using tasks ([ ]) in your notes or pages, this macro pulls them all into one view.
 Perfect for making sure nothing slips through the cracks.

💡 Best for: meeting notes, follow-up actions, or team task lists.

---

Expand

Got details that are important but make your page too long? Hide them under an “expand” button. Readers can open them as needed.

💡 Best for: FAQs, troubleshooting steps, or side notes.

---

Widget Connector

This allows you to embed content, such as YouTube videos, Vimeo videos, or social media posts, directly on the page.
There's no need to send people elsewhere; keep everything in Confluence.

💡 Best for: quick tutorial videos, announcements, or sharing something fun with the team.

---

Team Calendars (if your site has it)

Bring events, Jira releases, or milestones into a calendar view. Great for helping everyone stay aligned on dates.

💡 Best for: project deadlines, shared team planning, or cross-team visibility.

---

🌟 Final Thought

Macros aren’t just “nice to have”; they can completely change how your pages look and feel. Start with one or two options (such as Table of Contents or Expand) and see how much easier your content becomes to use.

👉 What about you — do you have a favorite macro trick? Drop it in the comments so we can all steal… uh, learn from your ideas! 😉

[Mia Tamm - Simple Table for Confluence]

Great list @Julie Kremp,
I often use Page Properties & Page Properties Report too, and one thing that has helped my team.

Thank you for putting this together! 

— Mia Tamm

[Rimantas Andrulevičius]

Hey, 

Nice article! One insight from my experience is that Confluence databases seem to have advantage over page properties and page properties report.

Databases can have:

- predefined values (page properties are prone to mistyped values)

- inline edit (page properties report is only a representation of data)

- create a page after you filled the metadata (with page properties report it's not possible to first add metadata and then create a page)

So in most cases I would suggest using databases

[Julie Kremp]

@Rimantas Andrulevičius, I love Databases too, they are so helpful, even more if you combine them with Tags and Status options. You need to try!

[Julie Kremp]

There are other very good ones and essential ones, like:

- Divider (a simple line that makes content easier) - typically, people forget about it.

- Databases, a macro, and a feature - handy

- Excerpt: This is very good to collect in one page descriptions from other pages, automatically - no copy and paste.

- Info panels - they are very cool, and you can customize them with colors and icons

- Status are interesting also depending on the content when you cannot change the Page Status;

[Anwesha Pan (TCS)]

Hi @Julie Kremp 

This is a good article, thanks for sharing 😊

I love using macros all the time specially the below ones are few of them 

• Divider
• Excerpt
• Info panels
• Status
• Table of Contents
• Expand/ Advance Expand
• Cards etc.