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Caution:
This functionality requires the application of AEM 6.3 Service Pack 3 (6.3.3.0).
Variations are a significant feature of content fragments, as they allow you to create and edit copies of the master content for use on specific channels, and/or scenarios.
From the Variations tab you can:
- Enter the content for your fragment
- Create and manage variations of the Master content
Perform a range of other actions depending on the data-type being edited; for example:
- Insert visual assets into your fragment (images)
- Select between Rich Text, Plain Text and Markdown for editing
- Upload Content
- View key statistics (about multi-line text)
- Summarize Text
- Synchronize variations with Master content
Caution:
After a fragment has been published and/or referenced, AEM will display a warning when an author opens the fragment for editing again. This is to warn that changes to the fragment will affect the referenced pages as well.
When you open your content fragment for editing, the Variations tab will be open by default. Here you can author the content, for Master or any variations you have. You can:
- make edits directly in the Variations tab
- open the full-screen editor to:
For example:
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Editing a fragment with structured content
A structured fragment contains various fields, of various data-types, that were defined in the content model. For any multi-line fields the full-screen editor is available.

The following actions are also available (for all the formats) when the full-screen editor (i.e. multi-line text) is open:
- Select the format (Rich Text, Plain Text, Markdown)
- Show Text Statistics
- Upload content
- Synchronize with Master (when editing a variation)
- Summarize Text
- Annotate your text
- Insert visual assets into your fragment (images)
The options for editing multi-line text depend on the format selected:
The format can be selected when the full-screen editor.
Rich text editing allows you to format:
- Bold
- Italic
- Underline
- Alignment: left, center, right
- Bulleted list
- Numbered list
- Indentation: increase, decrease
- Create/Break hyperlinks
- Open the full-screen editor, where additional options are also available:
- Paste Text/from Word
- Insert a table
- Paragraph style: Paragraph, Heading 1/2/3
- Insert visual assets
- Search
- Find/Replace
- Spellchecker
- Annotations
The actions are also accessible from the full-screen editor.
Plain Text allows for rapid entry of content without formatting or markdown information. You can also open the full-screen editor for further actions.
Caution:
If you select Plain Text you might lose any formatting, markdown and/or assets that you have inserted in either Rich Text or Markdown.
Note:
For full information see the Markdown documentation.
This allows you to format your text using markdown. You can define:
- Headings
- Paragraphs and Line Breaks
- Links
- Images
- Block Quotes
- Lists
- Emphasis
- Code Blocks
- Backslash Escapes
You can also open the full-screen editor for further actions.
Caution:
If you switch between Rich Text and Markdown you might experience unexpected effects with Block Quotes and Code Blocks, as these two formats can have differences in how they are handled.
When the full-screen editor is open, the action Text Statistics will display a range of information about the text. For example:

To ease the process of authoring content fragments you can upload text, prepared in an external editor, and add it directly to the fragment.
Summarizing text is designed to help users reduce the length of their text to a predefined number of words, while keeping the key points and overall meaning.
Note:
On a more technical level the system keeps the sentences which it rates as providing the best ratio of information density and uniqueness according to specific algorithms.
Caution:
The content fragment must have a valid language folder as an ancestor; this is used to determine the language model to be used.
For example, en/ as in the following path:
/content/dam/my-brand/en/path-down/my-content-fragment
Caution:
English is available out-of-the-box.
Other languages are available as Language Model Packages from Software Distribution:
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Are indicated by the highlight on the text, in both full-screen and normal mode of the editor. Full details of an annotation can then be viewed, edited, and/or deleted, by clicking on the highlighted text, which will re-open the dialog.
Note:
A drop-down selector is provided if multiple annotations have been applied to one piece of text.
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Can be viewed, and deleted, in Timeline for the selected fragment.
To ease the process of authoring content fragments you can add Assets (images) directly to the fragment.
They will be added to the paragraph sequence of the fragment without any formatting; formatting can be done when the fragment is used/referenced on a page.
Caution:
These assets cannot be moved or deleted on a referencing page, this must be done in the fragment editor.
However, formatting of the asset (e.g. size) must be done in the page editor. The representation of the asset in the fragment editor is purely for authoring the content flow.
Note:
There are various methods of adding images to the fragment and/or page.
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Use Select to add the asset to the paragraph system of your content fragment at the current location.
Caution:
If, after adding an asset, you change format to:
- Plain Text: the asset will be completely lost from the fragment.
- Markdown: the asset will not be visible, but will still be there when you return to Rich Text.
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Select Add; the fragment Master will be copied to the new variation, which is now open for editing.
Note:
When creating a new variation it is always Master that is copied, not the variation that is currently open.
You can make changes to the variation content after either:
- Creating your variation.
- Opening an existing fragment, then selecting the required variation from the side panel.

To rename an existing variation:
- Open your fragment and select Variations from the side panel.
- Select the required variation.
- Select Rename from the Actions drop down.
- Enter the new Title and/or Description in the resulting dialog box.
- Confirm the Rename action.
Note:
This only affects the variation Title.
To delete an existing variation:
- Open your fragment and select Variations from the side panel.
- Select the required variation.
- Select Delete from the Actions drop down.
- Confirm the Delete action in the dialog.
Note:
You cannot delete Master.
Master is an integral part of a content fragment and by definition it holds the master copy of the content, whereas the variations hold the individual updated and tailored versions of that content. When Master is updated it is possible that these changes are also relevent to the variations and, therefore, need to be propagated to them..
When editing a variation you have access to the action for synchronizing the current element of the variation with Master. This allows you to automatically copy changes made to Master to the required variation.
Caution:
Synchronization is only available to copy changes from Master to the variation.
Only the current element of the variation will be synchronized.
Synchronization only works on the Multi line text data-type.
Transferring changes from a variation to Master is not available as an option.