It is often required for texts in sales and distribution documents that a particular text appears unchanged throughout sales and distribution processing in the documents, for example, that the terms of payment remain in the document header from the quotation phase up until billing.

On the other hand, it may be necessary to change a text in a document without changing this text in the follow-up documents.

Therefore, there are two options in SAP sales and distribution processing for transferring a text from a master record or a document into a follow-up document.

• Duplicating text
• Referencing text

• Less storage space is needed.
• It ensures that the text is copied from the document into the follow-up document unchanged.

It should be specified in Customizing whether referencing or duplicating is to be carried out for each text type in the text determination procedure.

If a text is duplicated, the system creates a copy of the text. If you change the original text, this has no effect on the text in the follow-up document.

You can also change the copied text without affecting the corresponding text in a preceding or follow-up document.

If a text is referenced, then it only appears once in the database: In the documents in which the text appears, the original text is merely referred to as a reference. If you change the reference text later, the referenced text is automatically changed with it.

As soon as you change a referenced text, the system automatically deletes the reference to the relevant reference text. The text is then duplicated and becomes an independent text, which is no longer affected by changes made to the reference text.