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DVrabec's avatar
DVrabec
Copper Contributor
Aug 10, 2022

Collapsible sections: Linking to auto-expand a section and non-effective Search

 

As already discussed in some previous threads collapsible sections have a lowered functionality when being linked to; even though Section headers have anchor links, these have very limited function as they only bring you to the overall page with all sections. This is especially useless when you are trying to keep the page clean by collapsing your sections by default. The thread presents a workaround by adding an additional header within your collapsed section, which will open the section on landing, but you will end up with a redundant header: 

 

Collapsible section name 

Collapsible section name (redundant)

 

This is less than ideal and means always repeating your section names, it also doesn't work properly when you want to link from one section to another on the same page.   

 

Additionally, if you try searching your Site for a keyword contained in one of the sections, not only will it not bring you to the paragraph containing the keyword, it will only open the page with all sections collapsed and with a focus on the very top of the page.  Therefore there is no point in searching when you decided for Collapsible section organization for your pages, the Sharepoint basically tells you "It is somewhere on this page". You still need to expand each section and either scan the page to find the searched keyword, or use Ctrl+F.

 

Is there a way to report this to the actual developers so they can implement web functions that have existed since 1991? 

  • anchor link opens the page, moves the section title to the top of focus and opens a collapsed section (perhaps this could be a toggle in section options)
  • clicking a result in Sharepoint search does the above and additionally highlights the searched keyword within the section 

Thanks for reading. 

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