Reuse Content in Lists

When you are creating lists or procedures, you may find that there are opportunities for content reuse. A common example is if you are documenting software and you have a "Select Save" option that appears over and over again. To follow best practices, rather than create multiple versions of that, you should write it once and reuse it in your various procedures.

To reuse text fragments (individual paragraphs) in your lists, position the cursor inside a list step, where the para element is valid. This could be inside the para that is added automatically for each step, or it could be after the first para inside the step, but before the next step. Then use the Reuse text feature to search for reusable text fragments, and insert one at the cursor position. To find out more, see Reuse Text Fragments.

Valid cursor positions for reusing text fragments in a list.

To reuse an entire list, create an informaltopic and add the structure of the list into that. You can then insert the informaltopic into other topics, wherever it is needed. But remember to organize your informal topics into a logical folder structure in the Content Manager, so that other writers will be able to find them more easily. To find out more, see Create an Informal Topic.

To reuse parts of a list in another list, see Reuse List Items.