Question
How do I manually create anchor links in articles in Zendesk Guide?
Answer
With Guide, you can use the Insert/edit link on the editor's toolbar to add anchors in your articles as described in the article: Inserting and editing links in articles.
When you use this feature, the Heading doesn't appear when the customer selects the anchor link. As a workaround, create the anchor link through the Source code of your article.
To manually create an anchor link
- With the article editor opened, select the Source code </> icon.
- Navigate to the text that you want to target with a link. Insert the code snippet below before the text; this is typically on the same line:
<a name=your_anchor_name></a>
- Enter the desired anchor link name. Here's an example containing an
<a name="section1">=anchor: - Link to the anchor by following one of these two options for this.
Option 1
- Select the text you want to use as the link, then click the Insert/edit link icon.
- Select the Heading tab and find the anchor name you added (or the Anchor tab if you see it on your editor version) > select the Anchor of your choice.
- Click Add Link.
Option 2
- In the Source code editor, find the text you want to make into a link. Then, enclose the text in the tag below:
<a href="#your_anchor_name">Link text</a>
In this article's example, we want to make Section I into a link. We changed the code from:
<li>Section I</li>
To:
<li><a href="#section1">Section I</a></li>
Wrap the link text in opening and closing <a> tags, or there won't be anything for the user to select.
The example below shows how the link looks behind the editor before the article is saved:
2. Click OK to save your changes.
If the anchor appears to jump a few lines below the expected location, the toolbar at the top of your screen may interfere. If that is the case, minimize the toolbar and test the anchor link again.
You can also link to an anchor link on another page using the full URL plus the hashtag. For example:
<a href="https://support.zendesk.com/entries/98542436#some_anchor_name"></a>
Using a hashtag without a URL works only if the anchor is on the same page.
If you want the anchor link to go to your header rather than a few lines down, include a few page breaks between the header and the text body.
For more information, see the article: Inserting and editing links in articles.
22 comments
Sivachurian Sreedaran
Hi Zendesk Team, Please advise why it not redirect to exact location we set. it always goes up and down.
0
Dganit Rauchwerger
Hi, when clicking an anchor link in an article, it sometimes does not reach the exact location in the destination - sometimes above, sometimes below. This can sometimes be even a page above or below. Are you aware of this issue which makes using anchor tags in articles a bit problematic. Also, according to this reference, using the name attribute (as advised in your article) has been deprecated and replaced with id. Even replacing with id does not always cause the link to reach the desired destination. Would be grateful to hear what others are experiencing and possible workarounds for this issue. At this point, I am minimizing my use of anchors as much as possible. Thanks!
0
Paolo
We would need to see the actual article where your anchors are added. Please reach out to our Support Team and provide as much information as possible. You may follow the guide here: Contacting Zendesk Customer Support.
Best,
Paolo | Technical Support Engineer | Zendesk
0
Shahir ElShaieb
This does not work. I've tried linking from one article to another article using the heading id. I've created an <a name="something"></a> anchor in an article, then linked to it from another article using [article url]#something. I just get the top of the article, not the anchor, every time. I also tried adding a “name” attribute in the h tag (e.g. <h2 id="e348543573" name="useful-name"> and upon saving the article the name attribute is deleted!
It would sure be nice to link from one article to a heading in another one but I cannot do this at all.
0
Christophe A.
Anchor links are not specific to Zendesk. This is a HTML element and it should work even if the link is outside Zendesk.
Maybe try with a different web browser. This may be due to the configuration of your browser.
0
Mark Glinski
I find that I cannot link to anchors within articles from outside Zendesk. For example, we want to link into a section of an article from our UI, so we create an anchor for that section that works fine within Zendesk. But the link from the UI just goes to the top of the article.
Zendesk, is there a fix or workaround for this?
0
Beto
Hello Rhonda, thank you for your question!
I can confirm that this is the expected behaviour. When you create an anchor on a heading, once clicked, the "link" will send the user to right below said heading. The idea here is that the user reads the link/phrase that has the hyperlink/anchor, so there would be no need for them to read it again, once they are directed to the paragraphed that is referenced.
You can see an example of this following this link. This is a hyperlink to an anchor section of the article. Specifically to the section called "Adding articles to the knowledge base" but the link takes you to just below the heading, since you would have already read it if you had seen the article.
You could theoretically create the anchor on a phrase that is right above the heading, so that when you are redirected, you could see the heading instead. But this would mean that you would need to create a different heading for this.
I hope this was helpful!
0
Rhonda Green
We are finding that the when anchor link is clicked, it dropped well below the heading. I have noticed this in every article that we have tried to anchor. Is this a known issue?
0
William Grote
However in another article, I added an anchor tag, and the anchor appears in the Headings list and there is no Anchors section?
1
William Grote
OK, something changed today, now when I am manually adding anchors, and then go to the links, I see a new section called Anchors?
1
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