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SharePoint Reusable Content

I can pretty much say I know my way around SharePoint… But every once in a while you learn about a feature that you never knew was there… Most of the time its those annoying bugs that we call “features” but are true head against the wall things that make you go hmmmm… But this time its a good thing…

I was tasked with finding a way to create a header and footer for a publishing site. This header and footer would be consistent across all pages within the content area of the site. My First thought was ok I need a custom page layout, but this would not work since it needs to be easily updated via the SharePoint Interface.

So after some investigation I found out that SharePoint has a built in feature called “Reusable Content”

Basically all you need to do is simply edit the page of your publishing site and click on a content editor control. If you look at the image below there is a icon next to the image icon.

image The icon is not very obvious hence the reason why I never noticed it before… But if you click on this button you get the following list.

image

This is basically a list of all the reusable content that resides within that site collection.

If you don’t see what you like you can simply open up the list via the “Open List” button on the toolbar.

From that list you can now create either Reusable HTML or Text.

image 

New Reusable HTML form:

image

Once you have edited your content and choosen it from the list you will see the Reusable content within a grey boxed in area within the content.

image

So, how many other people out there never knew this feature was there? Am I the only one? Leave a comment with your experiences.

Comments

Khushi said…
Hey Erik,

I didn't know about this before. To give the same header and footer to all the pages of the site, I did cutomise the master page. Please correct me if I have any misunderstanding about what you were saying in this post and what I did.

Thanks & Regards
Khushi
Erik Swenson said…
There is no customization to either the Masterpage or the Page Layout to get this to work.

There is however a manual effort for the page author to click on that reusable content for every page that they want that header to be included.

The nice part that I did not include in this blog post is that if the header content is updated in the central list it will automatically update on all pages that reference it.
vynsane said…
i'm not clear why you wouldn't want to use a separate page layout for this - that way the header and footer would be automatically injected as opposed to needing to add them every time you wanted to publish a page with those features.

if the benefit is the instant updatability through leveraging the reusable content list, you can have your cake and eat it to: simply (or, not so simply, really) create a page layout that automatically grabs your reusable content! i outlined the procedure on my forum.
Its really interesting that we can reuse share Point content.

- J.
Web Designing
Unknown said…
but it not solve problem with menegment of master page data(when you need to have one header, footer for all site).
but it helps with pages, page layouts part (when you have field-then you can use this)...
so this functionality doesn't covers all issues.

And i see more betetr way to do it-
trough "Resource files"
then content will be different per "language" too.
with reusable content you need to do "extra" steps to implemnet multylanguage content...
Anatoliy
Unknown said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Web Solutions said…
HI

Nice information to share us and this information is help for web designers, whose can get better information about some more Web Solutions.
Janice Thorne said…
I knew about this feature, but could never get a clear picture of how to use it. This is awesome - very thorough. Thanks so much!
Gadgets UK said…
This is a GREAT post! I hope you not mind.I published an excerpt on the site and linked back to your own blog for people to read the full version. Thanks for your advice.
This is a good common sense article. Very helpful to one who is just finding the resources about this part. It will certainly help educate me.
Interesting and important information. It is really beneficial for us. Thanks
Thank you, thats very interesting information. I need to share with my friends.
Maneesh Kalra said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Interesting layout on your blog. I really enjoyed reading it and also I will be back to read more in the future.
I just wanted to add a comment here to mention thanks for you very nice ideas. Blogs are troublesome to run and time consuming thus I appreciate when I see well written material. Your time isn’t going to waste with your posts. Thanks so much and stick with it No doubt you will definitely reach your goals! have a great day!
Thanks for this post. It Very nice Blog. It was a very good Blog. I like it. Thanks for sharing knowledge. Ask you to share good Blog again.
Anonymous said…
Anyone experiencing an issue where after you insert a Reusable Content, save & close. Then when you Edit it again, the Reusable Content is gone?? It is replaced by one character, 'a'?
Pantyhose said…
This is a good common sense Blog. Very helpful to one who is just finding the resources about this part. It will certainly help educate me.
Thank you, thats very interesting information. I need to share with my friends.
Anonymous said…
Hi, very nice post.
I think the only down part of the "Reusable Content" is that you can not use it with content editor webpart which is actually used often through out a publishing site.
Thank you to tell us so much useful information. So nice sharing. I’m glad to read it.
This is a good common sense Blog. Very helpful to one who is just finding the resources about this part. It will certainly help educate me.
This blog is awesome full of useful information that i was in dire need of.
I just couldn’t leave your website before telling you that we really enjoyed the quality information you offer to your visitors… Will be back often to check up on new posts.
Interesting layout on your blog. I really enjoyed reading it and also I will be back to read more in the future.
Maneesh Kalra said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said…
Is it possible to create a page template with header, footer and page layout using reusable content

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