How to reuse content from one Confluence page across multiple pages?

[Stijn Geerts]

Hi everyone,

In our Confluence space we have several pages that contain a lot of structured information. We would like to work with a kind of “source” or “input” page, where information is maintained in one place, and then have that information automatically reused or reflected on other pages that link to it.

The goal is to avoid duplicating content and to make sure that when information is updated on the source page, it is also updated everywhere else it is referenced.

I’m wondering:

• What is the best way to achieve this in Confluence?

• Are there built-in features (like macros, includes, variables, page properties, etc.) that support this?

• Or would this require an app/add-on or custom solution?

Any best practices, examples, or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[Philipp Sendek _catworkx_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Stijn Geerts ,

great question! As you already assumed, there are indeed macros for exactly this kind of use case.
In particular you have two that would fit here:

1) The Include content (Include page) macro. You would place this on any page where you want to include the content of another page. In the macro you select the page you'd like to include. Once saved, the page would show the exact content of the included page at the position of the macro.

2) Excerpt and Include Excerpt. This works the following way: You place the content you would like to show on other pages within the "Exerpt" macro on your source page. On every page where you want to show this content, you will then use the "Include Excerpt" macro with the parameters "Source page" (your source page where the excerpt macro is on) and "Excerpt name" (yes, you could have multiple Excerpt macros on a page and select which one to display content from).

Keep in mind that both macros are read only, so you can't change the content of your source page through this.

I hope that helps!

Greetings
Philipp

[Stijn Geerts]

Thank you @Philipp Sendek _catworkx_  this what we were looking for! 

[Kris Klima _K15t_]

@Stijn Geerts 

You can bring what @Philipp Sendek _catworkx_ suggested a bit further and create pages with editable and non-editable (shared) content - see my community article for details - it's a little hack :) 

There are methods how to synchronize/reuse entire spaces (or sections of spaces) if you wanna do content reuse on a really big scale - you will need an app for that, but there are plenty of usecases.