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Keyboard shortcuts, page structure, and Jira-integration reference for Confluence.
| Concept | What it is | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Space | A container with its own permissions, homepage, and page tree. | The space key appears in every URL and is painful to change later. |
| Personal space | Each user's own space. | Fine for drafts. Anything others need should not live here — it disappears from view when the person leaves. |
| Page | The content unit, nested in a tree. | Moving a page moves its children. The URL contains the title, so renaming changes the link (old ones redirect). |
| Blog post | A dated, non-hierarchical entry. | Good for announcements — chronological rather than tree-structured. |
| Template | A reusable page skeleton, space-level or global. | The highest-leverage feature most teams never set up. |
| Label | A tag on a page. | Drives dynamic page lists and cross-space navigation. Underused. |
| Macro | Embedded dynamic content in a page. | Where Confluence stops being a text editor. See the Macros tab. |
| Restriction | Page-level access control on top of space permissions. | Inherited by child pages. The usual cause of "why can't anyone see this". |
| Version history | Every save, with diff and restore. | Nothing is ever really lost — including deleted pages, which go to the space trash. |
Structure that survives
- Give every space a named owner. Unowned spaces are how a wiki dies.
- Keep the tree shallow. Three levels deep is usually the limit before people stop finding things.
- Make the space homepage a real index — not the default empty page. A
Page TreeorContent by Labelmacro does it automatically. - Label pages consistently from the start. Labels let one page appear in many contexts without duplicating it.
- Archive rather than delete. Archived pages leave the tree and search but stay recoverable.
- Put a date and an owner on any page with a shelf life. An undated runbook is worse than no runbook.
# Type these and they convert instantly:
# + space → Heading 1 (## → H2, ### → H3, up to ######)
* + space → bulleted list
1. + space → numbered list
[] + space → task (checkbox) list
> + space → blockquote
--- → horizontal rule
``` + Enter → code block (then pick the language)
*bold* _italic_ +inserted+ -deleted- → inline formatting
`code` → inline code
# The insert menu — the one shortcut worth memorising:
/ → insert anything: macro, table, image, date, status…
@name → mention a person (notifies them)
[page title → link to another Confluence page
// → insert a date picker
:emoji → emoji picker
| Group | Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|---|
| Global | Show all shortcuts | ? |
| Global | Search | / (outside the editor) |
| Global | Create page | C |
| Global | Edit current page | E |
| Global | Comment on page | M |
| Editor | Insert menu | / |
| Editor | Bold / italic / underline | ⌘/Ctrl + B / I / U |
| Editor | Insert link | ⌘/Ctrl + K |
| Editor | Inline code | ⌘/Ctrl + ⇧ + M |
| Editor | Save / publish | ⌘/Ctrl + Enter |
| Editor | Paste without formatting | ⌘/Ctrl + ⇧ + V |
| Editor | Undo / redo | ⌘/Ctrl + Z / ⌘/Ctrl + ⇧ + Z |
| Tables | Next / previous cell | Tab / ⇧ + Tab |
| Tables | New row below | Tab in the last cell |
Collaboration
- Real-time co-editing, like Google Docs. Up to 12 simultaneous editors on a page.
- Inline comments: select text, then the comment icon. Far more useful than page comments for review.
@mentionnotifies someone; mentioning them in a task assigns it.- Drafts vs published: unpublished changes are visible only to you. Confluence Cloud autosaves but does not auto-publish — half-finished edits sitting in draft are common.
- Page comparison: version history → select two versions → view the diff.
- Watch a page or a whole space to get change notifications.
| Group | Macro | Does |
|---|---|---|
| Jira | Jira issues | Embeds live JQL results as a table or a count. The single most valuable macro — one JQL query keeps a status page permanently accurate. |
| Structure | Table of contents | Auto-generated from your headings, updates itself. Put it at the top of any long page. |
| Structure | Page tree | Live navigation of child pages. Ideal for a space homepage. |
| Structure | Children display | Lists immediate child pages — an index that never needs manual updating. |
| Structure | Excerpt / Excerpt include | Define content once, surface it on many pages. The fix for copy-pasted duplicate content. |
| Structure | Include page | Embeds an entire page inside another. Single source of truth for shared sections. |
| Dynamic | Content by label | Lists every page carrying a label, across spaces. Cross-cutting index with zero maintenance. |
| Dynamic | Recently updated | Live activity feed, filterable by space, label, or author. |
| Dynamic | Task report | Aggregates checkbox tasks across pages by assignee and status. |
| Callout | Info / Note / Warning / Tip | Coloured panels. Use sparingly — a page of all warnings has no warnings. |
| Callout | Status | A coloured inline lozenge — In Progress, Blocked, Done. |
| Layout | Expand | Collapsible section. Keeps long reference material from burying the useful part. |
| Layout | Code block | Syntax highlighting with optional line numbers and title. |
| Layout | Tabs / Deck of cards | Tabbed content. Availability depends on your apps. |
| Data | Chart | Renders a chart from a table on the same page. |
| Data | Attachments | Lists the page's attachments with versions. |
Templates and blueprints
- Space settings → Templates. Build one for anything written more than twice: meeting notes, incident reports, decision records, runbooks.
- Templates can include variables that prompt on creation, and macros that come pre-configured.
- Built-in blueprints cover meeting notes, decisions, retrospectives, and product requirements — worth reviewing before building your own.
- A decision record template with the date, the decision, the alternatives, and who decided is the single highest-value template most teams lack.
- Global templates need admin rights and apply everywhere; space templates don't and apply locally.
Permissions, in the order they apply
- 1. Global — who can log in and who is an admin.
- 2. Space — per space, per group or user: view, add, edit, delete, administer.
- 3. Page restrictions — narrow further on one page. They can only restrict, never grant access someone lacks at the space level.
- Page restrictions are inherited by all child pages. Restricting a parent silently hides the entire subtree — the most common permission surprise in Confluence.
- Restricted pages don't appear in search for users who can't view them, so a page can look deleted when it isn't.
- Space admins can see restrictions on pages in their space; use that to audit rather than guessing.
- Prefer groups over individual users. Per-person permissions become unmanageable within a year.
Search that actually finds things
- Filter by space, contributor, label, and date from the search page — usually faster than refining words.
- CQL (Confluence Query Language) is the advanced equivalent of JQL:
space = ENG AND label = runbook AND lastModified > now("-30d"). title ~ "onboarding"searches titles only — much more precise than full text when you know roughly what it's called.- Search covers attachment contents too, including PDFs.
- Archived pages are excluded from search by default, which is the point of archiving.
- If people can't find things, the answer is almost always labels and better titles, not a better search query.
1
Find the dead weight
CQL: lastModified < now("-365d") AND type = page
Anything untouched for a year is either finished, wrong, or abandoned. Sort by space to see which areas are worst.
2
Archive, don't delete
Archiving removes pages from search and navigation while keeping them recoverable. It's reversible, so it's an easy decision to make in bulk.
3
Give every surviving space an owner
Put the owner's name and a review date on the space homepage. An unowned space will be back in this state within a year.
4
Replace static lists with macros
Every hand-typed list of issues, links, or child pages is future staleness. Jira macros, Content by Label, and Page Tree stay correct on their own.
5
Deduplicate with Excerpt Include
Where the same paragraph has been pasted into six pages, define it once and include it. Copy-paste duplication is why five pages disagree about the same procedure.
Gotchas
Why nobody can see your page
- Page restrictions inherit downward. A restriction on a parent hides every descendant, and there is no obvious warning at the child level.
- Restrictions cannot grant access — someone without space View permission still can't see the page however you restrict it.
- A restricted page is invisible in search rather than showing "access denied", so it looks deleted.
- Pages in a personal space are effectively invisible to the org. Move anything shared into a team space.
- Unpublished drafts are visible only to their author. "I definitely wrote that" usually means it was never published.
Other things that catch people
- The page URL contains the title. Renaming creates a redirect, but external links and bookmarks pointing at the old URL depend on that redirect surviving.
- Moving a page moves its entire subtree — check what's underneath before dragging in the tree.
- Deleting a space is far more destructive than deleting a page and is admin-only for good reason.
- Deleted pages sit in the space trash and are recoverable by a space admin. Deleted spaces may not be.
- The Jira macro respects the viewer's Jira permissions — someone without access sees fewer rows than you do, not an error.
- Pasting from Word or Google Docs drags in messy formatting.
⌘/Ctrl + ⇧ + Vpastes plain. - Cloud and Data Center differ substantially — the editors, macro availability, and admin UI are not the same. Check which you're on before following a guide.
- Confluence Cloud's older "legacy editor" pages behave differently from newer ones; converting them can shift layout.
Tips
/ is the whole editorOne keystroke inserts any macro, table, image, date, or status. Learning this single shortcut replaces most toolbar hunting.
Embed live Jira, never a typed list
A JQL-backed table stays accurate with no maintenance. Any hand-typed list of issues is wrong within a week and quietly erodes trust in the whole page.
Excerpt Include kills duplication
Define a procedure once, include it everywhere it's needed. When it changes you edit one page, not six that will otherwise drift apart.
Build a decision-record template
Date, decision, alternatives considered, who decided. Ten minutes to set up, and it answers "why did we do it this way" for years afterwards.
Label from day one
Labels plus Content by Label build cross-space indexes automatically. Retrofitting labels onto a thousand pages is a project nobody ever does.
Nothing is lost
Version history keeps every save with diffs and one-click restore, and deleted pages go to the space trash. Edit boldly — it's all recoverable.
Resources
Confluence Cloud documentation
Official product docs. Check you're reading Cloud rather than Data Center.
support.atlassian.com
Macro reference
Every built-in macro with its parameters.
support.atlassian.com
CQL reference
Confluence Query Language — the tool for auditing and cleaning up a large instance.
developer.atlassian.com
Creating templates
Including variables that prompt on creation.
support.atlassian.com
Confluence Cloud REST API
For bulk audits, exports, and scripted cleanup.
developer.atlassian.com
Jira
The JQL you'll write for the Jira macro — the pairing that makes Confluence stay accurate.
build.ty1er.com
Notion
The common alternative — worth comparing if you're choosing rather than inheriting.
build.ty1er.com