Anything similar to 'Synced block' like Notion?

Synced block in notion is nothing but feature to enable a line or paragraph to coexist in two different pages simultaneously. If we make changes to that block from any page, it will reflect in all the pages where it is synced.
Very helpful feature while note taking or planning. Coda being an advanced tool than notion, I wonder if similar feature is present in coda too.

if not, have you found any workaround yet?

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Hey Piyush, welcome to the Community!

In Coda you could achieve this with a table and multiple views of it. You could set up a simple single-cell undecorated table and then copy it over as a view over multiple pages. Then you would be able to edit the same cell from either of the views, and the content of that cell would be reflected in every view:

It’s not ideal because table column widths are not flexible and the text in the tables tends to be smaller, but that’s one way to reuse a block of content and make it editable from either page.

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Hey Paul, Thanks for your warm welcome :blush: I am new to coda and from a non-technical background. From now on, you might see me often here putting up questions :sweat_smile:

And your answer helps. Thank you so much :sparkles:

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I wonder if there should be a slash command perhaps:

/include -> object | formula

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From what I can tell, there is no equivalent in Coda as of today. Not for text at least. There is something similar for tables, but that’s not available for all kinds of blocks.

welcome to the community @Ambroise_Dhenain

@Piyush_Patil, i use ‘synced-blocks’ all the time in notion to place a ‘description’ at the top of every page and then wherever i have a link to that page elsewhere, i include that block

so whenever i amend a page and change its description block at the top; the new description appears throughout the rest of the document wherever i have a link to the page

i now do exactly the same thing in coda as follows…

the first line on every page is a named formula that contains the description of the page (my ‘synced block’ text)
the formula name is the name of the page (i add ‘NB_’ to the front to make it easier to find in the editor)

the block looks like this

and the formula looks like this (just put the description in quotes - so the formula’s value is the text

image

so elsewhere in my document, everywhere i put a link to that page, i also put a reference to the formula

so it looks like this

image

where i build each line as follows

  • type @ followed by the page name
  • type = followed by NB_page-name to insert a reference to the page description formula

I then select the @ page-link and set its format to ‘inline code’ (just select and hit shift-backquote)

ps;
you will also see that i add a set of ‘breadcrumbs’ next to the page description formula like this…
image

which gives the user navigation to the relevant pages in the documents hierarchy
i do this as follows

  • type - > to get the arrow
  • type @ page-name to generate a link to that page
  • select the link and press shift-back-quote to format it as an inline-code (puts the rectangle around it)
    • this makes it look more like a button-to-be-clicked, an affordance hint to the user to click it

its not exactly the same as the synced-block - changes can only be made on the top of the page
but at least the description is automatically displayed anywhere i type =NB_xxxx elsewhere

(@Paul_Danyliuk’s suggestion of using a single-row table DOES work both ways - your choice)

for my next big project, i will be looking to automate all this much more, so i will probably build a table of pages, descriptions and links

respect
max

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it’s been 2 years now since this thread, iwas wondering if CODA has a “sync block” now like Notion in 2024? I just migrated from Notion and that was a feature that I use ALOT of. the instructions above is wayyyyyy too complicated.

Hey @Janine_D! Thanks for following up on this thread. While this is still not possible at this time, the Coda team has been tracking this as a feature request. That said, we have gone ahead and tracked your vote for this feature formally.