If you've ever drafted a mailing, it's likely you spent a bit of time deciding on the best formatting solution for your stories. At this point, it's also likely you'd like to copy it to make the creation of future mailings even easier.

Copying stories within Mailing Content Areas (MCA) in MD2 (see Mailing Content) can be accomplished with the click of a button, and there are two benefits to doing so:

• You can copy stories and modify them for story-level targeting.
• You can save time and re-purpose a story type you’ve already formatted (this is especially helpful if you prefer not to use custom layouts).

Copying Stories

1. Navigate to Mailing Designer 2.0 > Create > Mailing or open an existing MD2 mailing.
2. On the Design tab, click Add Story. Add any images and text, and format your content.
3. Hover over the story you want to copy and click the Copy Layout icon.

MD2 creates a copy of the story in the same MCA, but the copy does not inherit the Name and Story-Level Targeting Options properties.

You can now edit the copy.

NOTE: Once your MCA contains its maximum number of stories, you cannot copy any additional stories (the layout headers no longer display the Copy Layout icon until you delete an existing one). For example, the MCA below only allows three stories, and the Copy Layout icon in the header is no longer available:

Moving Copied Stories

You can drag-and-drop a copied story into a different MCA.

Limitations

Moving copied stories is simple and useful, but there are the following limitations.

• You can move copied stories from one MCA to another only if the destination MCA supports the story type. For example, you cannot move a Text with Headline story into an MCA that supports only Image with Text story types.
• You can't move a copied story into an MCA that is at its maximum number of stories.

Copying A/B Test Stories

MD2 only supports one story-level A/B test per mailing. However, you may copy the A or B versions within the MCA (as long as the MCA has not reached its maximum number of stories).

EXAMPLE: If you click the Copy Layout icon for the A story, the copy will contain the same content and formatting as the A story. However, it will not contain any A/B testing properties. You can copy both the A and B versions into the same MCA (they are independent from the A/B test).

Copying Stories in Templates

You can copy MCAs in TD2 as well. This creates a new MCA within the same section that uses the same properties (Maximum Stories, Maximum Columns, and Allowed Story Types) as the original MCA - except the Name field.