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Confluence wiki markup syntax

This page describes the wiki markup used on some administration screens in Confluence Cloud.

Wiki markup is useful when you want to do one of the following:

  • Create links using the Advanced tab of the Links Browser.

  • Add custom content to the header or footer of a space.

  • Insert a block of wiki markup (or markdown) into the Legacy editor. (Choose Insert > Markup.) Note: the new editor doesn’t support markup. Learn more about the new editor roadmap.

Can I insert markdown?

Confluence Cloud supports inserting content in markdown. This is often used in ReadMe files. See Keyboard shortcuts and autocomplete for some examples.

To insert markdown in the Legacy editor:

  1. Choose Insert > Markup

  2. Select Markdown

  3. Type or paste your text - the preview will show you how it will appear on your page. 

  4. Choose Insert.

As with wiki markup, Confluence Cloud will convert your markdown to the rich text editor format. You will not be able to edit your content using markdown.

Headings

There are six heading sizes, h1 through h6. To format text as a heading, prefix the text with the name of the heading you want followed by a period:

Input

Output

h1. H1 heading

H1 heading

h2. H2 heading

H2 heading

h3. H3 heading

H3 heading

h4. H4 heading

H4 heading

h5. H5 heading

H5 heading

h6. H6 heading

H6 heading

Lists

Wiki markup allows you to create bulleted or numbered lists, and is flexible enough to allow a combination of the two list types.

To insert a line break in a list, type //. Empty lines may disrupt the list.

Bulleted lists

To create a bulleted list, type the asterisk followed by a space before each item on the list. Add more asterisks to create sub-items. Each additional asterisk adds another level.

Input

Output

1 2 3 4 5 * a bulleted item * a bulleted item ** a bulleted sub-item ** a bulleted sub-item * a bulleted item
  • a bulleted item

  • a bulleted item

    • a bulleted sub-item

    • a bulleted sub-item

  • a bulleted item

To get square bullets instead of round ones, use hyphens - instead of asterisks *.

Numbered lists

To create a numbered list, type the hash # followed by a space before each item on the list. As with bulleted lists, the number of hashes determines the level of the item.

Input

Output

1 2 3 4 5 # a numbered item # a numbered item #* a sub-item #* a sub-item # a numbered item
  1. a numbered item

  2. a numbered item

    1. a sub-item

    2. a sub-item

  3. a numbered item

Sub-items in numbered lists may appear as capital letters (A, B, C), lowercase letters (a, b, c), Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3), or Roman numerals (i, ii, iii) depending on your browser and the style sheets installed on your Confluence Cloud site.

Mixed lists

You can combine these methods to create mixed numbered and bulleted lists as shown below.

Input

Output

1 2 3 4 5 # a numbered item # a numbered item #* a bulleted sub-item #* a bulleted sub-item # a numbered item
  1. a numbered item

  2. a numbered item

    • a bulleted sub-item

    • a bulleted sub-item

  3. a numbered item

Tables

You can create simple tables using Confluence wiki markup, with columns separated by the pipe | and rows separated by line breaks. To give a cell a gray background, add a second pipe.

For example, the following input:

1 2 3 ||heading 1||heading 2||heading 3|| |cell A1|cell A2|cell A3| |cell B1|cell B2|cell B3|

Will produce this output:

heading 1

heading 2

heading 3

cell A1

cell A2

cell A3

cell B1

cell B2

cell B3

You can also create tables using the column and section macros. This method gives you more control over the size of table cells, but doesn’t produce highlighted cells. For more information, see Table Type 2 in this reference document.

Embedded lists

You can use Confluence wiki markup to embed lists in tables, as in the following example:

1 2 3 4 5 6 ||Heading 1||Heading 2|| |* Item 1 * Item 2 * Item 3|# Item 1 # Item 2 # Item 3|

The code above will produce the following table:

Heading 1

Heading 2

  • Item 1

  • Item 2

  • Item 3

  1. Item 1

  2. Item 2

  3. Item 3

Advanced table formatting

You can add color and other formatting options to your table using the panel macro and certain third-party apps (if your Confluence Cloud administrator has installed them on your site).

Text effects

Input

Output

*bold*

bold

_italics_

italics

-strikethrough-

strikethrough

+underline+

underline

text^superscript^

textsuperscript

text~subscript~

textsubscript

{{monospace text}}

monospace text

bq. blockquote

blockquote

You can also set the color of your text. For example, if you type {color:red}your text{color}, the phrase “your text” will appear in red.

Breaks

You can add paragraph breaks, line breaks, and horizontal rules in Confluence wiki markup.

Paragraph breaks

In Confluence wiki markup, paragraphs are created from any continuous line of text. To create paragraph break, insert two carriage returns after the paragraph text. This is the equivalent of wrapping text in a set of <p></p> tags in HTML.

Line breaks

There are two ways to create a line break within paragraph text:

  • Implicitly, by entering a single carriage return

  • Explicitly, by entering two consecutive backslashes \\

These methods are equivalent to separating text with the <br> tag in HTML.

Most of the time, explicit line breaks aren’t required and a single carriage return is enough. However, they are necessary when you need to break up text in a single list item, as in the example below:

Input

Output

1 2 3 4 * Term 1 \\ definition * Term 2 \\ definition
  • Term 1
    definition

  • Term 2
    definition

To use more than one explicit line break in a row, separate each one with a space, e.g., \\ \\ for two line breaks.

Horizontal rule

To create a horizontal line across the width of your page or content block, type four dashes in a row ---- at the beginning of a line, then press enter or space.

Make sure that the dashes are on a separate line from the rest of the text.

Input

Output

1 2 3 here is some text ---- divided by a horizontal rule

here is some text


divided by a horizontal rule

Confluence wiki markup lets you add hyperlinks to text in certain administration screens. The table below illustrates the syntax for adding links.

Method

Result

[#anchor]

Link to an anchor link on the current page, where anchor is the name of the anchor.

[pagetitle^attached.ext]

Link to a file attached to the current page, where pagetitle is the name of the page and attached.ext is the name of the file.

[pagetitle]

Link to a specific page.

[pagetitle#anchor]

Link to an anchor on a specific page.

[pagetitle^attachment.ext]

Link to an attachment on a specific page.

[spacekey:pagetitle]

Link to a page in another space, where spacekey is the appropriate spacekey.

[spacekey:pagetitle#anchor]

Link to an anchor on a page in another space.

[spacekey:pagetitle^attachment.ext]

Link to a filed attached to a page in another space.

[/2004/01/12/blogposttitle]

Link to a blog post in the current space, where blogposttitle is the name of the blog as it appears on the page.

[spacekey:/2004/01/12/blogposttitle]

Link to a blog post in another space.

[spacekey:]

Link to the overview for another space.

[~username]

Link to the profile of a specific user.

[https://www.atlassian.com]

Link to an external website.

[mailto:service@atlassian.com]

Link to send an email to a specific address (replace service@atlassian.com with the appropriate email address).

[file://z:/file/on/network/share.txt]

Link to a file on your computer or on a network share that you have mapped to a drive. Only works with Internet Explorer.

[! https://external/image.png!|https://external/link.html ]

Displays an external image and links to an external website.

Confluence Cloud treats headings as anchors, so you can link to headings with the following pattern: [spacekey:pagename#headingname]

The headingname is case-sensitive and must be entered without spaces.

For each of the links in the table above:

  • You can prepend a link alias, so that alternate text is displayed on the page. For example: [link alias|pagetitle#anchor]

  • You can append a link tip, which appears as a tooltip. For example: [pagetitle#anchor|link tip]

Images

You can display images from attached files or remote sources.

Method

Result

!http://www.host.com/image.gif!

Displays an image from an external website on the page. Requires a fully qualified URL.

!attached-image.gif!

Displays an image file that is attached to the current page.

!pageTitle^image.gif!

Displays an image file that is attached to a different page in the same space.

!spaceKey:pageTitle^image.gif!

Displays an image file that is attached to a page in another space.

!/2010/05/23/My Blog Post^image.gif!

Displays an image file that’s attached to a blog post.

!image.jpg|thumbnail!

Displays an image attached to the current page as a thumbnail. Viewers can click on the thumbnail to see the full-sized image. This feature only works with image files that are attached to the current page, and thumbnails must be enabled by the site administrator.

For any image, you can specify attributes of the HTML image tag in Confluence wiki markup in a comma-separated list appended to the URL. In the example below, the image will be aligned to the right of the page with 4 pixels of whitespace above and below:

!image.gif|align=right, vspace=4!

The following HTML image tag attributes are available:

Attribute

Result

align

Aligns the image on the page. Possible values are:

  • left

  • right

  • bottom

  • center

  • top

border

Set the width of the border (in pixels).

bordercolor

Set the color of the border (name or hex value). Used with the border attribute.

hspace

Set the amount of horizontal whitespace to appear around the image (in pixels).

vspace

Set the amount of vertical whitespace to appear around the image (in pixels).

width

Set the width of the image (in pixels). This will override the natural image width.

height

Set the height of the image (in pixels). This will override the natural image height.

title

Set alternate text for the image, which is displayed as a tooltip when on hover.

alt

Set alt text for the image. Search engines can index this text, and it contributes to the accessibility of the page for screenreaders and other text-only access methods.

 

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