Now, let’s cover Synced Blocks. This is a very neat and interesting type of block, though it’s one that I don’t use too often.
In a nutshell, a Synced Block is essentially a special type of block in Notion that is synced thus displayed in more than one place at the same time. All blocks in Notion are unique — and while we can, of course, type the same text in multiple places, or upload the same image more than once, these will still be fully independent, original blocks.
Now, by turning a “normal” block into a Synced block, we can now paste this block into other pages anywhere in our Notion workspace and this new pasted block’s contents will stay synced with the original. What I love about this is that this sync is two-way, so any edits to this newly pasted “Synced” instance of the block will sync back to the original, and vice versa.
See this quick GIF for a simple demonstration, where I turn an already existing paragraph block into a Synced block, and then paste it in a different page:
[GIF Synced block creation]
Copy link to headingCreation and adding content
We can create synced blocks just like any other block. Their creation command is /synced . A new synced block will be “blank” — as in, there won’t be any content within. If you hover over your mouse or click on the synced block, you’ll notice a clearly visible red border appear – this signifies that a block is Synced, and that all content within this border will be visible to anyone viewing any instance of this block.
Synced blocks are a little bit different than most other blocks, since we can put any other type of block inside of a Synced block. Once our new Synced block is created, you’ll notice that we can not only type just regular text, but also use the regular slash menu commands to create any other blocks within the Synced block. This is what’s so great about this block — we can put any other content inside of it. This means that I we can put a bulleted list, a callout, an image, and some to-do’s all in a single Synced block:
[Synced block add content GIF]
Just make sure all of this content is within the red border, and it will be synced.
You can also drag already existing content into a Synced Block, and this is something I actually do most often when working with this type of block — first, create your content as normal, then add a Synced block below, select your existing blocks, and drag them into the Synced block.
Copy link to headingSyncing behavior and limitations
Whenever you hover over your Synced block, you’ll see a “Editing [original/in x other pages]” message and a “Copy and sync” button at the top of the red border. This first message will tell you whether the instance you’re viewing is the original, or a synced copy. The second button lets you handily copy the link to your Synced block. You can paste that link into any Notion page, and a little menu will pop up asking you whether you’d like to paste this link as a Synced block. That action will create a Synced copy of said block.
[Synced block paste link GIF]
Now, there are a few important limitations to remember:
First, we can’t put a Synced block within a Synced block. I can’t really see a situation where someone would want to do this, but either way, it’s worth mentioning.
Now, another crucial factor to remember are sharing permissions. This is a topic we’ll dive into in great detail in module 7 of this course, so don’t worry if this won’t make total sense yet.
A user needs to have access to the page the original instance of the Synced block is on to see any other instances of the block. This means that if I share a page with a coworker, and that page has a synced block in it that is not the original instance, they won’t see the contents of that synced block until I share the page containing the original with them as well. Otherwise, they will see this message:
[Synced block no access message]