Can you dynamically duplicate text in Apple Pages?

Imagine a recipe book. Several recipes include custard and, to save the reader having to jump around, you add the list of ingredients on each recipe which includes custard.


Obviously, a simple copy and paste of the text would work.


But if you revise the recipe, maybe state "Big Company granulated sugar" because you get sponsored, or realise you should have typed "one tablespoonful" rather than "one teaspoonful", you now have to work through all copies of the custard ingredients.


It would be very convenient to be able to edit the list of ingredients (indeed, any copy of the list of ingredients) and update everywhere you have inserted it. Dynamically. Without having to manually go through. In much the same way that a Table of Contents updates automatically when you change a header which is included in the ToC.


The example is a simple hypothetical description for discussion but is fairly close to the real case. And my main issue is that I want to avoid any possibility of making a mistake. Whether a typo, or a whole ingredient being changed.


I can see this is possible if both lists of ingredients are in cells in tables - using a formula. But would rather not have to do that, if avoidable.


Mac mini, macOS 15.3

Posted on Mar 22, 2025 5:46 AM

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Mar 22, 2025 6:13 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thank you.


Find and replace really doesn't help very much.


Looks like I will have to use tables. If the ingredients list is in a cell of a table, I can create a single cell table and use a formula to have the contents of the ingredients cell included. Which does what I want but is somewhat awkward. And it only works in one direction - from the original to the copy - not dynamically in either direction which is what I would really have liked.

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Can you dynamically duplicate text in Apple Pages?

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