Change the format of the text in an Excerpt Include?
Asked by L. Sheppard:

I have an excerpt defined on page A, and an excerpt include on page B. I want the text to come over onto page B but I want it to look different - different font, different alignment. Is there a way to change the format of the text coming to the target page without changing the format of the text in the source page?


Answers:
author: Fabienne Gerhard
body: Hi [@L. Sheppard](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1139507)

there may be a way changing the style via css writing a usermacro where you put the excerpt include macro in - but you will need some coding skills for that.

There is definitly the opportunity to change macro style - but it's always the question whether it is worth the effort.

For inspiration have a look on [this topic](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/How-to-display-flat-list-of-descendant-pages-in-confluence/qaq-p/355677) where [Davin Studer](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/781467) changed the look of the child macro.

comments: author: L. Sheppard
body: Thanks for the link Fabienne and that's an interesting topic. But I haven't created user macros before and don't have time to try to figure out how to do that now unfortunately.


author: Matt Reiner [K15t]
body: [@L. Sheppard](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1139507) you can totally do this, but in a limited way. Once you've added the Excerpt Include macro on page B, select the macro and apply standard text formatting from the toolbar, like heading style, bold, alignment etc.

This will effect all included content, so if you make it bold, all content will be bold, etc.

In fact, if the page A excerpt contains a numbered list, and you put the Excerpt Include macro on page B within a numbered list, it will display the numbered list from page A as a sub-list under the list on page B.

<br />

![Screen Shot 2019-03-19 at 09.50.46.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/49068i03142887B46A4D1C/image-dimensions/572x226?v=v2 "Screen Shot 2019-03-19 at 09.50.46.png")

![Screen Shot 2019-03-19 at 09.50.54.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/49069i8819BCB8F3437D54/image-dimensions/575x212?v=v2 "Screen Shot 2019-03-19 at 09.50.54.png")

comments: author: L. Sheppard
body: Hi Matt, so that's not working for me. I tried applying basic formatting to the macro (heading 6), but it just included the original formatting from the source page.

Here's what the result is:

![ExcerptInclude_target_final.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/49320i4C8F0A651FD1D1B2/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ExcerptInclude_target_final.PNG")Here's the content in Edit mode:

<br />

![ExcerptInclude_target_edit.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/49321i9980574AA08F7082/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ExcerptInclude_target_edit.PNG")

And here's the code - it looks like everything should be formatted as h6, but that's not what is displaying. :

![ExcerptInclude_target_code.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/49322i17A531160737B0BE/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "ExcerptInclude_target_code.PNG")


author: Matt Reiner [K15t]
body: [@L. Sheppard](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1139507) Well that's surprising. It looks like the heading formatting of the original content overrides the formatting on the Include macro. I can't believe it works that way, but it does. :(  

Well, a solution would be to remove the formatting from the original content and then only apply formatting to it when you include it on a page.


author: L. Sheppard
body: Yes, I'll do that, bummer that it won't work, seems like something really useful to others too.


author: Dominic Lagger
body: Hi [@L. Sheppard](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1139507)

The key sentence you wrote is "... without changing the format ... in the source page?"

And for this the answer is no, you can't. Because the excerpt just display what is in the macro from the source page.

A solution would be to copy paste the information, but then you lose the automated synch.

Hope this will help you.

comments: author: L. Sheppard
body: Thanks for the response Dominic.


Tags: confluence-server

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