Content element recommendation system

A system and method for identifying relevant content from other documents and presenting candidate documents/content in a document authoring application is described. A computer-implemented method includes performing an analysis of text of a document being authored by a user with a document authoring application, searching a document library for content elements and documents based on the analysis of the text, identifying candidate documents and candidate content based on the searching, presenting a list of candidate documents or candidate content with the document authoring application, receiving a selection of a candidate document or candidate content from the list in the document authoring application, and including an instance of the selected candidate document or candidate content in the document.