one pdf, multiple locations

[Mary Von Tungeln]

In confluence, how do I link the same pdf to multiple pages, rather than attaching it seperately to each page. I only want to have to edit the doc one time.

[Davin Studer · Accepted solution]

This is how we do it. We have a sectrion of our site that we call a resource library. It is where we upload attachments like doc, pdf, xls, ppt, txt, mp4, etc. So we have a page called Resource Library and under that page we have other pages that cattegorize the resources. It looks something like this.

Resource Library
|
| Administration Resources
| Finance Resources
| Training Resourcs

The main Resource Library page doesn't have any attachments. Then on the other pages that do have the attachments we label the attachments as such (finance_docs_agreements, finance_docs_policies, finance_docs_accounts_payable). This gives us the ability to group types of documents by label if needed and then show them on another page(s) via the attachments maco width the label filter and source page properties set.

You can also link directly to any of the files from any page if you need to highlight just a specific attachment. This lets us single source our documents so that they don't get attached to multiple pages and then comes the question which one is authoritative sicne they will innevitably get out of sync. You could also put page snippets in the resource library that might be used in multiple pages and include them using the include page macro.

We don't worry about putting images in the library as they usually are screen shots or something like that that are specifc to one page. But most abything else that is an attachments should go into the resource library.

[Mary Von Tungeln]

Thanks so much!! This was very helpful for a start. I think I get it, but I want to clarify.

So, the pages that would have previously had their own attachments will just have links back to the Resource Library and no individual attachments.

i.e. the only pages that will have attachments will be the child pages of the resource library.

[Davin Studer]

Correct. The cool thing about alot of the Confluence macros that deal with attachments is that they let you specify the page the attachment lives on. It doesn't have to be attcahed to the page that the macro is on. For inastance the PDF, DOC, PPT, and XLS all let you specify which page has the attachment to render. So does the attachments macro.

This is model that we are adopting here in our organization to so that we only have to deal with single sources of information.

If you wanted to you could even put page restriction on the resource library so that only editors can see it and its children and the average person would only see the regular pages.

This will probably require some training and handholder for the editors till they get it ... that is the problem we are having. But once it is done this way it should make things much easier to maintain.