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In Confluence Cloud, is there a way to search for broken links, such as anchors to existing pages?

Deleted user March 23, 2018

Is there a way to find broken links that are either internal to a page, or to another existing page? I've seen some documentation about going to "undefined pages" to find where you created a link to a page that did not exist, and you still need to create the page. First, I cannot locate this option in Confluence Cloud. Second, that does not solve my issue. 

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Andrea Mendez
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March 23, 2018

In any page you can see it's info you just click on the options menu, in the Page Information section you will see the incoming and outgoing links of the page.

PageInfo.PNG

I made some tests of deleting the anchor on one page, and in the other the link still worked, if I'm not mistaken this is a functionality of Confluence, because in theory if you want to stop users from accessing to a page you don't longer want them to see, you would eliminate the link and not the anchor, so if by accident someone deleted an anchor, Confluence keeps like a history of the anchor so it can protect the link information and the link can still work.
If this does not happend in your instance I believe the link should appear in red, like a link to an undefined page. I hope this works for you :)

Deleted user March 26, 2018

Hi, I tested this and using the same example as before, I found out that if I delete the anchor from the "Batch Jobs" article, and then I try the link that is pointed to the deleted anchor from the "Membership" page, the link will still take me to the "Batch Jobs" article but only to the top of the article, instead of to the section I'm linking directly to within the article. 

The link on the "Membership" page still shows as a valid underlined link because it technically still works as a link ... to the page, but not to the specific section. But the direct link to the section functionality is lost and there is no indication that it needs to be fixed. Do you think this could be a bug that I need to report?

"Page Information" did not show me anything about that link.

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Andrea Mendez
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March 26, 2018

Hi, if I'm not mistaken it's not a bug, that's how Confluence works, there is no way to know if the anchor of a link is deleted, because I believe the instance proctects the information maintaining the link to the page (although not to the specific section) so the link won't appear broken, I can think of a way to work around this, is that you get notify if changes are made to a page, you would just have to follow the page and verify if the anchor has been deleted, although it would be kind of exhausting to do it this way.

Deleted user March 27, 2018

Thank you. I appreciate your responses, help, and time :) 

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Andrea Mendez
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March 23, 2018

Hi Sally! You can find the "Undefined pages" tab when you enter to "Space settings", that option appears on the lower part of the sidebar, once you've click on "Space settings" you will see the "Overview" of the space, you go to"Content Tools" tab, and in there you can find the "Undefined pages" tab, where it will show you all the links that point to an unexisting page, however if this does not solve your problem, could you give an example of what do you mean by broken link please? :)

Deleted user March 23, 2018

Hi, I have located the "Undefined pages" tab. Thank you. Let me see if I can explain my scenario clearly. For example, I have an article named Batch Jobs. I create an anchor to one of the batch jobs, which is "AutoRenewalProcessing." AutoRenewalProcessing Source Anchor Link.png

 Then, I create a link to the "AutoRenewalProcssing" anchor from within a different article named Membership. If the "AutoRenewalProcessing" anchor gets deleted from the Batch Jobs article (see image above), is there any indication or way of letting me know that the link in the Membership article is now broken (see image below)?AutoRenewalProcessing Destination Anchor Link to Another Article.png

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Meg Holbrook
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March 23, 2018

Hey Sally, 

The only way I know of currently isn't a full solution in all cases, but works (mostly)

Check for undefined pages in your space settings:

 

2018-03-23_11-27-10.png

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