Placeholder dialog
Key point: Create and edit a placeholder in your content.

This dialog is available during editing when you click the  Placeholder... option in the editing context menu. It lets you enter the name and text of a placeholder.

In the Placeholder name field:

  • Enter the name of an existing metadata property, OR
  • Enter a name for a new metadata property, which you can create at another time. 

If you don’t know the properties available by name, you can use the Matching metadata field to select an existing metadata property from the drop-down. The callout box at the bottom indicates whether the metadata are loaded from the document or publication.

In the Placeholder text field, enter some fallback text to display, which gets resolved to the corresponding metadata property value. 

Mapped placeholders

When the Placeholder name matches an existing metadata property, the placeholder is mapped to an existing metadata property. The dialog shows the matching metadata title and value to the right.

In view mode, a mapped placeholder is automatically replaced by the metadata value when the Resolve placeholders option is selected:

Unmapped placeholders

When the placeholder name doesn’t match any existing metadata property, the placeholder is unmapped. In that case, the dialog shows the placeholder is unresolved, and the matching metadata shows New property.

In view mode, an unresolved placeholder appears with the icon followed by the placeholder name:

This dialog doesn’t create the new property. You need to create the metadata property at another time, before you can resolve the placeholder.

Illegal metadata

When the placeholder name matches a metadata property with an unsupported type, the name cannot be used for placeholders. The dialog shows the value as Not available and a callout indicates why the metadata property cannot be used.

Placeholders cannot be used with properties that have multiple values or a type that is not a simple text value such as xrefs, markup, and markdown. You can only map placeholders to metadata properties which have a single string, date, or datetime value.