Github Markdown Heading Anchors

gistfile1.md

Anchors in Markdown

To create an anchor to a heading in github flavored markdown. Add - characters between each word in the heading and wrap the value in parens (#some-markdown-heading) so your link should look like so:

[create an anchor](#anchors-in-markdown)

A few additional comments that I don't know if were mentioned is that

1. It doesn't matter if you're using # ## ### to size your titles they link will always have only one # like this [text text](#link-text)
2. Obviously your title Won't have - rather they'll have spaces, In the link itself replace spaces with dashes
3. If you're title ends with that a ? remove the ? in the link not [text text](#link-text?) rather [text text](#link-text)
4. At the point of writing, anchor links are not reflected in the preview, you'll have to commit to see if it worked

Hope these helped someone

Works like a charm. Make sure the fragment link is all in lowercase

# [Heading Link](#section-i-want)

## [Section I Want] 

thanks so much!!!

This is great, thanks! I just wanted to add:

4. At the point of writing, anchor links are not reflected in the preview, you'll have to commit to see if it worked

In VSCode with the GitHub Markdown Preview extension, anchor links work perfectly, as do file links.

@yaronelh

back to top

go back to TOP of page

Thank you so much, I find this works amazingly! :)

I have found here (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/contribute/how-to-write-links) that you can create explicit anchor links but it is not recommended.

Why is it not recommended if you can used this to solve the problem with Spanish words with accents?

## <a id="anchortext" />Header text

How do I use anchor links to link to another page on the same Wiki?

Here's a tip -- if you're having trouble with your anchor not working due to misspellings or odd characters, simply hover over your heading on Github, then hover or click the link icon that appears to the left. You can then right click to copy the link location, left click it to go to the URL and view it in your address bar, or simply stay hovered over it and view it in the status bar of your browser.

Thanks a lot! droplet icloud : there is a hyphen (#droplet-icloud) to a heading that looks like "# Droplet icloud"

How can I link a header with numbers?
Example:
# 1.1 Header

How can I link a header with numbers? Example: # 1.1 Header

Try #11-header

Doesn't work. It creates an empty link that doesn't go anywhere :(

How can I link a header with numbers? Example: # 1.1 Header

Surround your header text with a named anchor link (e.g. <a name="1-1-header">1.1 Header</a>) and link to that.

How can I link a header with numbers? Example: # 1.1 Header

The header at the top includes a link that leads to the header at the bottom.
Upd. You can use any id, its value does not have to match the text of the element.

# 1.1 [Header](#1.1)   

...some text...

# 1.1 Header<a id='1.1'></a>

IDK if this hack will help anyone at all. However span tags are rendered in GitHub's Markdown Parse. The id attribute is replaced with id="user-content-${whatever you made the id}" I.E.

<span id="85af93540870"></span>
<!-- The above is rendered to the below -->
<span id="user-content-85af93540870"></span>

<!-- So when you do something like the below -->

* [Leading The Way](#85af93540870)

<!-- Filler Code Goes Here -->

## <span id="85af93540870"></span>Dude Where's My Car

It will link directly to the span.

This worked for me, I created a markdown creator that works off of six hex character ids which I utilized this hack to allow the table of contents to be generated.

Hope it helps someone!!! =)

Dev Jon Taylor,

• Happy Coding!

So, characters like á,é,í,ó,ú,Á,É,Í,Ó,Ú,Ñ,ñ are just omitted in anchors.

According to the specification, an URL fragment is ASCII-only (no "international characters" accepted directly).
That applies to most other URL components. Browsers usually perform the interpretation automatically in the address bar in order to be more user friendly - copy+pasting into plain text (such as Notepad) allows to see the "real" URL.

Upd. You can use any id, its value does not have to match the text of the element.

# 1.1 [Header](#1.1)   

...some text...

# 1.1 Header<a id='1.1'></a>

Nice, that was actually the only real solution I found in the www for this issue. ❤️ Many thanks!

Easiest Way I found to fix this was after writing down the headings on github, just do inspect element from the browser and find what the anchor links are 😁

thx, could not find the link for my complex text.

Upd. You can use any id, its value does not have to match the text of the element.

# 1.1 [Header](#1.1)   

...some text...

# 1.1 Header<a id='1.1'></a>

Nice, that was actually the only real solution I found in the www for this issue. ❤️ Many thanks!

This works well. Thanks! 👍

Thanks

Note- If anyone facing issues with anchor linking. Please ensure that the text of anchor and the text of place where you are linking are different.
For e.g. There will be problem if you use

> ### [Anchor Link](#anchor-link)
> ## Anchor Link

Here problem because "Anchor Link" is used as text in both lines
But if different text used in [ ] then no issues. For e.g. we added "1." in [ ]

> ### [1. Anchor Link](#anchor-link)
> ##  Anchor Link

Is there a way to do the opposite don't generate anchor links. This seems to happen automatically in github wiki everytime you defined a header and that clutters the sidebar navigation.

Every time I change section name I need to go and update all the anchors.

Consider HTML <tr id="XXX">…. Then a link to #XXX is a link to that whole row. Clicking on a <a href="#XXX">to XXX</a> causes the whole row to be on the screen, if possible the top pixel of the row at the top of the screen (not always possible if row near end of page). This is good.

In Markdown, putting | <a name="XXX"></a> … |, and clicking on [to XXX](#XXX) jumps to the middle of the row, at least if there is an image in the row. The top half of the row isn’t visible: above top of viewport. This is not good.

Please, is there a known solution?

Jacks and Numbers
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
TwentyOne
TwentyTwo
TwentyThree
TwentyFour
TwentyFive
TwentySix
TwentySeven
TwentyEight
TwentyNine
Thirty
ThirtyOne
ThirtyTwo
ThirtyThree
ThirtyFour
ThirtyFive
ThirtySix

Solution found.
• The large image cannot be a link (which is what confounded me).
• Then wrap the <a names="…">…</a> around the image.

Just wanted to leave a note that this approach does have accessibility/semantic issues (ref: https://developers.google.com/style/headings-targets).

Unfortunately, Github does currently not support the extended markdown syntax heading-ids (e.g. ### My Heading {#my-heading-id}), so the most accessible approach would be to use the HTML equivalent <h3 id="my-heading-id">My Heading</h3> instead.

I needed a quick Markdown TOC generator that would be compatible with GitHub, so I made my own: gh-toc.

It’s basically a web page with some JavaScript: You paste in your Markdown and it generates a GitHub-compatible Table of Contents. Your browser does the work and nothing gets sent to the Internet.

Features:

• Full Unicode support, all international characters.
• Better handling of (hopefully) all underscore cases.
• Correct handling of code with backticks ` inside.
• Much better code block support (backticks, tildes, differing number of them).
• YAML front matter support.
• Optional output of the full Markdown file, ToC inserted between <!-- ToC begin --> and <!-- ToC end --> HTML comments, instead of just the ToC.
• Optional named anchor generation for each ToC element (not needed for GitHub use).
• Optional use of id instead name attribute in generated anchors.

Markdown test file included.

thank you

Is there any way to cross reference to another files header?

For example:

File1 contains

# Title
## Description
Lorem Ipsum

File2 contains

# Data
Click here to see the Description from File 1: [Information](../File1#Description)

Is there any way to cross reference to another files header?

For example:

File 1 contains

# Title
## Description
Lorem Ipsum

File2 contains

# Data
Click here to see the Description from File 1: [Information](../File1#Description)

Looks like it does work like that however keep in mind if you have special Characters as a File name (at least for me) it did not properly show up in VSC. However after just pasting it in manually and clicking it via the preview it should work out just fine. Note the %20 stands for a blank space character here.

For example:

File 1 contains

# Title
## Description
Lorem Ipsum

File2 contains

# Data
Click here to see the Description from File 1: [Information](../File%201#Description)