Links

A markdown link looks like this:

[Link text](destination.md)

It has two components:

• Link text enclosed in square brackets [ ]
• Link destination enclosed in parentheses ( )

Link between documentation files using either relative or absolute paths.

Navigate relative to the current file's location:

[Security documentation](../security/index.md)

[Monitoring guide](monitor/index.md)

You can also use absolute paths to link to pages within the same repository.
Say you're working on a random page somewhere in the docs-content repo. You can link to a page in the deploy-manage section like this:

[API Keys](/deploy-manage/api-keys.md)

Note the leading / before the path.

Link to sections within the same document using heading anchors prefixed with #:

[Jump to the next section](#next-section-anchor)

Headings will automatically create anchor links in the resulting HTML. They are automatically generated by:

• Converting to lowercase
• Replacing spaces with hyphens
• Removing special characters

For example:

### Same-page links (anchors)
<!-- Creates anchor #same-page-links-anchors -->

You can specify custom anchors for headings inline:

## License management [manage-license]
<!-- Creates anchor #manage-license instead of #license-management -->

Custom anchors are also cleaned up to remove special characters and spaces, and converted to lowercase:

## API Setup [First Time Setup!]
<!-- Creates anchor #first-time-setup -->

Link to documentation in different repositories using the scheme://path syntax:

[Kibana API documentation](kibana://api/index.md)
[Beats configuration](beats://configuration.md)

The syntax follows the format <scheme>://<path>, where:

• scheme: The target repository name (e.g., kibana, beats)
• path: The file path within that repository

Link to websites and resources outside the Elastic docs:

[Elastic Cloud](https://cloud.elastic.co)
[Elastic Documentation](https://www.elastic.co/guide)

You can include Markdown formatting within link text:

[**Distributed architecture**](distributed-architecture.md)

[*Production guidance* and best practices](production-guidance.md)

[`manage-connectors.md`](manage-connectors.md)

When linking to local Markdown files, you can omit the link text to automatically use the target page's title:

[](maintenance.md)  
<!-- Uses the title from maintenance.md -->

[](monitoring.md#alerting)
<!-- Uses "Alerting" section title from monitoring.md -->

You can also auto-generate text for specific headings within files:

[](deploy.md#scaling)
<!-- Uses "Scaling" section title from deploy.md -->

[](#configuration)  
<!-- Uses the "Configuration" section title from current file -->

Some text $$$custom-anchor$$$ more text