Section Editing allows a user to edit a sub-section of the page only. This makes it easier to change long documents. Section Editing is sometimes called Partial Page Editing.

If you have the rights to do it, each headline (usually only the first 3 levels) starts a new section. When a page is writable a small Edit button appears at the end of the section. Using this button loads only this section into the editor.

In the Admin page, you can set up the maximum level of section editing, so that your page isn't flooded by “edit” buttons. See Maximum section edit level in your admin page or maxseclevel in your local.php config file.

• Setting up a maxseclevel of 0 will disable section editing.
• The Wideredit plugin allows editing multiple sections at once. This is especially helpful on smartphones, since the editing area of a single section is sometimes too small. On the other hand, editing an entire wiki page on a smartphone is often unmanageable.
• If you prefer having the section edit button beside the header (and not at the end of the edit section), see the plugin Editsections2.
  NOTE: The Editsections2 plugin seems not to be maintained anymore and it is not compatible with the current version of Dokuwiki (as of 2018-06-22). Although a PR/fix is pending and could be applied manually, see https://github.com/kazmiya/dokuwiki-plugin-editsections2/pull/11/files, or use the fork: https://github.com/igloonet/dokuwiki-plugin-editsections2.

• The use of the linebreak plugin may break the section editing mechanism: see this bug description.
• It is not possible to collaborate on one page with one editing a section and someone else editing another. This is due to the fact that section editing locks the whole page.