Create a master list of excerpts?
Asked by Chelsey Hartman:

Hi! Our department uses a lot of the same reference points throughout our documentation, which has to be incredibly detailed due to the experience levels of our contractors and their various levels of English fluency. I discovered that there is an Excerpt macro that connects to the Excerpt Include macro, which has been very helpful when using the Include macro without the sidebar navigation we create being shown twice.

What I would LOVE to be able to do is have a single Master List of reference points that can be changed in this one location, and then be able to call those individual excerpts throughout the rest of the documentation. Often, file locations are changed, or a process changes and it needs to be adjusted throughout multiple documents, across multiple teams within our department.

For instance, we have 30 different programs, each with specific step-by-step instructions about how to create those programs. Within those instructions, there will be a step that says, "Upload to X location." But on 10 programs, the location will be the same. On 12 others, there will be a different location (but the same for those 12). And so on. So it would be pretty nice to have all these locations in one document, each using the Excerpt macro and being pulled into those tutorials by the Excerpt Include macro. Unfortunately, it seems Excerpt Include just pulls the first Excerpt it sees and doesn't allow for defined excerpts.

Does anyone know if this is possible to create?


Answers:
author: Katerina Kovriga {Stiltsoft}
body: Hi [@Chelsey Hartman](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4568734)

We can suggest using our app - [Table Filter and Charts for Confluence](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/27447/table-filter-and-charts-for-confluence?hosting=cloud&tab=overview) (available for Cloud/Server/Data Center).

Besides its main features such as filtration, data aggregation and table calculations, the app provides the [Table Excerpt/Table Excerpt Include](https://docs.stiltsoft.com/display/public/TFAC/How+to+use+Table+Excerpt+and+Table+Excerpt+Include+macros) macros.

The macros collect both tabular and non-tabular content and allow you to assign names to your excerpts. So, you'll be able to pull several (not one!) excerpts from one page and choose which exact excerpts you need.

The Table Excerpt Include macro also allows you to show the page meta data of your excerpts:

* page name (link) if you need to go to the original content and change smth
* parent page
* space
* labels
* author
* last modifier
* created
* updated

Maybe this will help your case.


author: Sedera Randria
body: Hi [@Chelsey Hartman](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4568734)

I'm using MultiExcept add-on for several years now to create, for example, master pages with program-level definitions (DoD, DoR, conventions, etc.)

<https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/169/multiexcerpt>

Does it help you?


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: I am a little uncertain as to the question here.

You seem to be asking for a list of the excerpts in use in the system, but then towards the end of the question, you say "Excerpt Include just pulls the first Excerpt it sees"

Are you talking about getting a list of excerpts, or are you looking for a multi-excerpt macro (one that can support many excerpts being pulled from a single page, rather than the standard excerpt that can only see one on any source page)?


Tags: excerpt