Creating a Linked Project from a Design Project
Saving Stationery produces a snapshot: a .wxsp file that has to be regenerated and redistributed every time the design changes. Since 2026.1, ePublisher Designer offers a second way to hand a design to someone, Save as Express Project..., which creates an ePublisher Express project linked to the design project itself. The linked project takes its formats, output targets, and styles from the design project, and it offers to synchronize whenever the design project changes — the same prompt writers already know from Stationery, pointed at a live project instead of a snapshot.
Nothing about the design project changes. It keeps its own source documents and settings, and it remains the only place the design is edited.
Master and Satellite Projects
The arrangement this creates is one master and any number of satellites:
One seat owns the master, the ePublisher Designer project the formats, output targets, and styles are authored in. Only this seat needs Style Designer, and only this seat edits the design.
Everyone else works in a satellite, a linked ePublisher Express project with its own source documents and its own output. A satellite picks up design changes through the ordinary synchronization prompt.
Because ePublisher Designer also opens ePublisher Express projects, a satellite can be worked in from either product. A team can therefore be one Designer seat and several Express seats, or all Designer seats, without changing how the projects relate to each other. For more information, see Opening ePublisher Express Projects in ePublisher Designer.
The same command covers the handoff from design to production. When a design is ready to publish from, create a linked project for the production content, hand it to whoever owns that content, and keep refining the design in the master. Each refinement reaches the production project as a synchronization prompt rather than as a redistributed file.
Note: Stationery remains the right choice when the design must be distributed rather than shared — to another site, to a customer, or to anyone who will not have the design project on hand — because Stationery is self-contained and carries its own copy of the output format files. A linked project needs its design project to be reachable in order to synchronize. For more information, see Deploying Stationery.
To create a linked ePublisher Express project
Open your Stationery design project in ePublisher Designer.
On the File menu, click Save as Express Project....
ePublisher Designer saves the design project first, so that an unsaved edit is not read as a change to synchronize the first time the new project is opened.
Confirm the design project shown in Linked to. This is the project the new project synchronizes with.
In the Project name field, type a name for the new project.
In the Location field, specify the folder to create the new project in.
If you want the new project to start with the same content structure as the design project, select Include source documents, groups, and Merge Settings. Leave it cleared to create an empty project that the recipient fills with their own documents.
Click OK.
Click Yes to open the new project now, or No to hand it on as it is.
What the Linked Project Receives
The linked project receives the design: output formats, output targets and their settings, styles, conditions, variables, cross-reference definitions, and the user, output format, and format target override files. It does not receive the design project's identity, so it is a project in its own right rather than a copy.
Source documents, groups, and Merge Settings are carried only when you select the option for them. When they are, the path recorded for each source document is rewritten to resolve from the new project's location, so the documents are found wherever you choose to create the project. Each document is also given a new identity in the new project, so the two projects keep track of their own documents and scanning or generating in one has no effect on the other. Group identity is preserved, so Merge Settings that place those groups keep working in the new project.
Note: Document-level style overrides are deprecated and are not carried into the new project. If the design project has any, ePublisher Designer tells you they were dropped.
Once the linked project exists, it behaves like any project based on Stationery: it prompts to synchronize when its origin changes, and target setting customizations made in it are overwritten when it synchronizes. For more information, see Synchronizing Projects with Stationery.