# Re-use or paste existing citation?

**URL:** <https://community.rootsmagic.com/t/re-use-or-paste-existing-citation/2236>\
**Category:** RootsMagic\
**Tags:** question\
**Created:** [October 30, 2021, 12:51am UTC](https://community.rootsmagic.com/t/re-use-or-paste-existing-citation/2236 "2021-10-30T00:51:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jimclake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6f9a4e/32.png) [@jimclake](https://community.rootsmagic.com/u/jimclake)\
**Post date:** [October 30, 2021, 12:51am UTC](https://community.rootsmagic.com/t/re-use-or-paste-existing-citation/2236/1 "2021-10-30T00:51:00Z")

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What is the advantage (other than reducing citation records in the DB) of re-using vs. pasting a source citation?

Thanks.

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**Author:** ![thejerrybryan](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/community.rootsmagic.com/thejerrybryan/32/404_2.png) [@thejerrybryan](https://community.rootsmagic.com/u/thejerrybryan)\
**Post date:** [October 30, 2021, 1:06am UTC](https://community.rootsmagic.com/t/re-use-or-paste-existing-citation/2236/2 "2021-10-30T01:06:57Z")

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1. If you make a correction to a reused citation, the correction will be made for all references to the reused citation. For a copied citation, the correction will be made only for the citation you are editing.
2. If you run a report with endnotes and with the Reuse Endnote Numbers option, the number of endnotes in your report will be much less.

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**Author:** ![cweese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f6c823/32.png) [@cweese](https://community.rootsmagic.com/u/cweese)\
**Post date:** [October 30, 2021, 12:53pm UTC](https://community.rootsmagic.com/t/re-use-or-paste-existing-citation/2236/3 "2021-10-30T12:53:32Z")

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I don’t recall anyone discussing a certain question before: How do I know if a citation was created by reuse or by copying another citation? Is there some indicator somewhere? In other words, if I edit a citation, how do I know it will affect other citations or not?

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**Author:** ![cweese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f6c823/32.png) [@cweese](https://community.rootsmagic.com/u/cweese)\
**Post date:** [October 30, 2021, 1:06pm UTC](https://community.rootsmagic.com/t/re-use-or-paste-existing-citation/2236/4 "2021-10-30T13:06:05Z")

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OK , I think I see how now. Go to sources, click on the citations number to see all the citations for the source you are interested in, then scan down the list of citations to see if the citation you want has a number greater than 1 in the Used column.

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**Author:** ![Terry](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/community.rootsmagic.com/terry/32/108_2.png) [@Terry](https://community.rootsmagic.com/u/Terry)\
**Post date:** [October 30, 2021, 1:31pm UTC](https://community.rootsmagic.com/t/re-use-or-paste-existing-citation/2236/5 "2021-10-30T13:31:52Z")

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There seems to be 2 posts with a similar subject at the moment. The other one is here:

> [@Identifying copied and reused citations](https://community.rootsmagic.com/t/identifying-copied-and-reused-citations/2242):
>
> How does one distinguish, after their creation, between citations that have been paste/copied and those that were paste/reused?

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**Author:** ![jimclake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6f9a4e/32.png) [@jimclake](https://community.rootsmagic.com/u/jimclake)\
**Post date:** [October 30, 2021, 9:17pm UTC](https://community.rootsmagic.com/t/re-use-or-paste-existing-citation/2236/6 "2021-10-30T21:17:30Z")

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Thanks, Jerry - for my use, I rarely run into either situation, but I do see #1 as a possibility when a source remains the same but a particular citation of it might change or get corrected.