Share/use a section of a document in another document

Introduction

Use this article when you want to reuse the same content across multiple documents. Section sharing allows you to maintain content in a single location while making it available in other documents, helping to ensure consistency and reduce duplicate maintenance.

Summary

After following these steps, a section can be shared for use in other documents and included wherever needed. Changes made to the shared section can be reused across multiple documents.

Overview

Make a section available for sharing

1. Open the document containing the section you want to share.
2. Select the section you want to share.
3. Open the Share tab (1).
4. Enable Share this section for use in other documents.
5. Enter a clear description that other users can use to identify the section.
6. Choose whether the section can be shared by everyone or only by specific users or groups.
7. Save the changes.

A share icon (2) is displayed next to the section when sharing is enabled.

Include a shared section in another document

1. Open the target document.
2. Create a new section where the shared content should appear.
3. Select the new section.
4. Open the Share tab.
5. Enable Use a shared section here
6. Select the shared section and version you want to include.
7. Save the changes.
8. Generate a PDF to verify the result.

Keep a shared section up to date

1. Open the shared section in the target document.
2. Open the Share tab.
3. Enable Update when new version is approved.

When enabled, the shared section automatically uses the latest approved version whenever a new version is frozen or approved.

Remarks

Section hierarchy

Shared sections always include all underlying subsections. It is not possible to share only part of a section hierarchy.

A section that contains shared content cannot contain additional subsections of its own. Likewise, a section that already uses shared subsections cannot itself be shared.

Some section types and hierarchy levels may not be compatible with each other. The available options depend on the document configuration. When moving content between different hierarchy levels, ensure that the resulting structure remains logical and valid.

Document status and versioning

The status of the target document cannot be higher than the status of the shared section. For example, content with an Edit status cannot be included in a Published document.

When freezing a document version, Tangelo warns if the document contains shared sections that are not yet frozen.

Layout and PDF output

Shared sections work best when the source and target documents use a similar structure and pageflow.

Differences in pageflow settings, column layouts, or section configuration can affect PDF output. Always verify the generated PDF after implementing shared sections.

Alternative approaches

Section sharing is designed for reusing content between documents with a similar structure. For highly flexible content reuse, data linking or manual content management may be more suitable than section sharing.