When working on Confluence content, we often find ourselves reusing the same blocks over and over again. Think product descriptions, process steps, visual elements, and more .Perhaps the easiest options are to repost visuals, rewrite text content (if it’s short), or simply copy/paste. All options are fine at first glance, but are they sustainable, scalable, or time efficient? Not really.
The real problem appears later.
When information changes as it always does, you’re suddenly updating the same content in different places. Miss one instance, and inconsistencies creep in. Over time, duplicated content creates confusion, inconsistencies, and unnecessary maintenance effort.
To avoid errors and make better use of your time, you’ll need dedicated macros, and of course, the right strategy to make the most out of them.
In this article, we’ll explore the Excerpt and Page Include macros, and of course, go through some best practices to properly reuse content in Confluence.
But first, Why reusing content in Confluence?
Ensure consistency
When the same information appears in multiple places, it should say the exact same thing everywhere. If even one outdated version remains on a Confluence page, that might be the version a team member, a new hire, or even a customer lands on. Even worse, they might reuse or share that outdated content themselves, unintentionally spreading incorrect information further. Reusing a single source of truth ensures uniform messaging across teams and spaces.
Make updates easier & faster
The process of updating content requires you to: First find the information, and then update it. Think of a scenario where you need to change product spécifications for example. You would have to locate every page containing those specs and edit them individually. In larger Confluence environments, this can mean searching across spaces, verifying versions, and double-checking formatting. The process is repetitive and time-consuming.
Reusable macros eliminate this entire workflow. Instead of hunting down scattered content, you update a single source. Confluence then automatically reflects changes everywhere the content is referenced. What once required hours of manual effort becomes a quick and controlled update.
Eliminate errors
Rewriting content or even copy-pasting is extremely error prone. Over time, these errors can accumulate leading teams to question the content accuracy (and of course, time consuming updates afterwards).
Because the content is not duplicated but referenced, there’s no room for divergence. You avoid version mismatches, formatting inconsistencies, and human oversight. Instead of maintaining fragile copies, you maintain a stable reference.
What Types of Content Formats in Confluence Should You Reuse?
When planning reusable content, it helps to focus not just on what the content is about, but how it is structured. The content format dictates whether it is suitable to be reused. These are the formats you want to centralize and manage with native macros or third party apps:
Checklists and progress bars:
Structured content such as onboarding checklists or project steps are the most common formats of reusable content. Here you can use a combination of both native and Atlassian Marketplace apps to properly structure your content. Think action items, tables, progress bars (powered by Vectors 😉), and much more. The key consideration with this type of content is timeliness. While the structure of a checklist or process can be reused, the tasks themselves shouldn’t be time-sensitive. Reusing outdated action items or steps can quickly lead to confusion.
FAQs
Perhaps the most reused content format out there, FAQs can be embedded within all types of pages whether for internal or external use. Many teams wrap questions in Expand macros inside an Excerpt to reuse them, which works but isn’t scalable.
A better approach is to use a dedicated app like FAQ for Confluence that comes with its own FAQ Listing macro. The macro can be wrapped in an Excerpt and is fully dynamic: any updates in the centralized FAQ are automatically reflected wherever the Excerpt is included. In addition, the macro supports flexible display options allowing you to filter questions by category, contributors, space, or specific FAQ pages, giving you far more control than manual inclusion.
Glossary terms
Terms and definitions are another format that is reused across multiple pages. Without a structured approach, teams often use tables to list terms. While this works initially, it quickly becomes hard to maintain as the glossary grows or terms are updated.
Using a dedicated app like Glossary for Confluence allows you to embed terms in a central source page, wrapped in an Excerpt, and of course, reuse them elsewhere. The app provides two main macros: the Glossary List macro, which generates dynamic lists of terms with filters such as space, glossary, labels, contributor, or date. And the Term Card macro, which allows embedding individual terms on multiple pages. This makes glossary content easy to initially embed with rich filters, and then reuse.
Content reuse macros in Confluence & some best practices
Reuse sections of a Confluence page with the Excerpt macros
The excerpt macros help you easily reference and reuse content across your Confluence site. This is ideal when you only want to display specific elements without embedding the entire source page.
Both macros work hand in hand. On your source page, use the excerpt macro to define and wrap the content you want to reuse. This could be a short description, a disclaimer, product specifications, or any block of text that appears in multiple places.
Then navigate to any other page inside your Confluence site and use the Insert Excerpt macro to pull that exact section.
Although quite simple to work with, there are some common things you need to consider when working with the Excerpt macros.
- Create a Library of reusable content:
It is often tempting to use regular pages as your source pages from which you can pull sections. Think space homepages or a main documentation. There are two issues with this approach.
The first is mainly organizational. You will always have to look for that one page that contains your excerpt to update, which wouldn’t be obvious for everyone.
The second is contextual. Content written for a specific page often depends on surrounding sections, links, or headings. When that same section is reused somewhere else, it may lose context or appear incomplete.
Creating a dedicated library of reusable content helps avoid both issues. By storing excerpts on clearly named pages specifically designed for reuse, you make them easier to find, maintain, and update. It also ensures that the reusable content is written in a more neutral way, so it works well in different contexts across your Confluence space.
To further improve organization and discoverability, consider adding a Page Properties macro to each source page, combined with a centralized Page Properties Report at the library’s homepage. The properties can be useful metadata about source pages such as creation & update dates, contributors, status, and any other useful info.
- Use a clear naming convention:
Your Library contains source pages which in turn contain your excerpts. And both need clear and consistent names to make them easier to identify and reuse later. Opt for descriptive names that reflect the actual content or purpose of the excerpt.
A practical approach is to combine category prefixes with short, meaningful descriptions. For example, you might prefix marketing related content with MKG followed by a brief description such as Pricing 2026, giving you the excerpt MKG-Pricing 2026. By following this structure, you can quickly identify what an excerpt contains and choose where to include it.
A clear, consistent naming convention makes your library easier to navigate and simplifies updates.
Reuse entire pages with Include Page macro
The Include Page macro allows you to display the full content of one Confluence page inside another. This makes it ideal for important yet brief pages that need to be consistently referenced across your Confluence site.
All you have to do is create and maintain a source page with the content you want to reuse. On any other page, you insert the Include Page macro and select the source page. Confluence will automatically render the entire content of the source page in the target location.
But similar to the Excerpt macros, there are some key considérations to keep in mind.
- Keep source pages both informative and concise:
Inserting one page into another can greatly affect readability especially if the included page contains a lot of content, multiple sections, and macros. For this reason, pages designed for reuse need to be short, concise, with only essential macros.
- Review source pages for context:
Before including a page, consider whether any links, references, or embedded content might be confusing in a new location. Design source pages so that they work independently, ensuring that included content is always meaningful and accurate, regardless of where it appears.
- Create & maintain a source page library:
Similar to the excerpt macro, make sure to store all pages meant for inclusion in a clearly organized Library. The latter will be simpler and less complex than the first we covered, since it only includes pages, but it still benefits from a clear naming convention and organized structure. Give each source page a name that clearly communicates its content and purpose.
This makes source pages easier to locate, include, and update.
And there you have it! Reusing content across Confluence requires a combination of features and a robust strategy to make the most out of them. By leveraging macros such as the Excerpt and Include Page macros, maintaining dedicated libraries for reusable content, and choosing the right formats for reusable content, teams can save time, reduce errors, and ensure consistency. And as always, if you would like more Confluence tips, make sure to take the blog tour.
Frequently asked questions
No. The Insert Excerpt macro is designed to pull content from a different Confluence page than the one where the Excerpt macro lives. You can’t use Insert Excerpt to reuse a section on the same page where the Excerpt is defined; it only works across pages or live docs.
No. Content inserted through the Insert Excerpt macro is read-only on the target page. This page only displays the referenced content but does not control it.
Yes. When inserting an excerpt into a page, you can select a source page or live doc from the same space or another space by typing the space key and page name.
Not really. Content including text, tables, images, and simple macros work inside an Excerpt. However, the macro isn’t designed to reference content outside itself, so layout or embedded macros that depend on context may not render as expected when reused on another page.
No. Included content is read-only on the target page. To edit it, you must work on the original source page where the Excerpt or included page is defined.
Yes. Viewers need View permissions on both the page where the Include Page or Excerpt is inserted and on the source page being included. If they lack access to the source, the included content will not be visible to them.
