Skip to main content

Solutions

Law firms

Tax, audit & accounting firms

Corporations

Governments

Products

Legal

Trade & supply

Tax, audit & accounting

Corporate tax

Risk & fraud

Books

Recommended products

Questions? We are here to help.
Contact us

Purchase

Buy solutions

Buy books

Contact sales

Questions? We are here to help.

Resources

Insights

Events

Product training

Product communities

Developers

Author Online

Using an External Dictionary in Author Online

An External dictionary in Author Online is a separate template that stores a centralised set of variables, their definitions, and optionally questionnaires, which can be shared and reused across multiple templates. This allows you to maintain variables in one place and apply consistent definitions to many documents, saving time and ensuring conformity.

Attach an External dictionary

To attach an External dictionary, navigate to the hamburger menu and choose
External dictionaries
 from the drop-down list.
The External dictionary window opens. If no External dictionaries are attached, Author Online displays the screen shown below.
Now, select
+Attach
 to attach documents. You will be prompted with the window below, which allows you to attach documents from the server you are currently connected to.
From the dropdown, select the dictionary you want to attach or type the file name from the server you want to attach. For each dictionary attached, it will display details such as when it was last updated and by whom, helping authors confirm they are using the correct and most up-to-date master dictionary.
You can also choose to include the questionnaire layout by selecting the
Include questionnaire layout
 option, which imports related pages and groups along with other supported items such as variables, warnings, and lookup tables. If the external dictionary uses an outdated template and does not contain group or page indexes, the dictionary is still attached, but pages and groups are not imported.
Once attached, the dictionary appears in the list, and imported variables and questionnaire pages are shown as hyperlinks in the Template Setup and Questionnaire screens.
Dictionaries that are already attached, as well as the current template uploaded to the server, are excluded from the External Dictionaries drop-down list to prevent duplicates.
note
Author Online no longer supports file-based external dictionaries and instead uses server-based dictionaries only, providing a centralised and more flexible way to manage templates.

Detach an External dictionary

To remove a dictionary, select the
remove
 icon. You are then prompted to choose whether to detach and keep the content or detach and remove the content.
When you select
Detach and remove content
, the external dictionary is detached, and all content imported from that dictionary is removed from the template. This includes variables and questionnaire pages that were added from the external dictionary, and any associated hyperlinks are also removed. As a result, the imported content is no longer available in the Questionnaire or Template Setup screens.
When you select
Detach and keep content
, the external dictionary is removed only as a linked dictionary, but the content imported from it remains in your template. All variables and questionnaire pages that were brought in from the external dictionary stay available in the template and can continue to be used.

Refresh External dictionaries

The
Refresh
 button refreshes an attached external dictionary to keep template content aligned with the latest dictionary data.
You can either
Refresh
 or
Refresh & replace
 the dictionary.
  • Refresh
     – Updates existing linked content and adds new content from the dictionary.
  • Refresh & replace
     – Replaces matching existing content with the latest dictionary data.
Refreshing an external dictionary ensures your template stays up to date by syncing it with the latest dictionary content, maintaining consistency across linked variables, questionnaire pages, groups, lookup tables, and warnings.

This article applies to:

  • Product: Contract Express