# Rendering imported cells

**URL:** <https://talk.observablehq.com/t/rendering-imported-cells/2455>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [October 8, 2019, 7:27pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/rendering-imported-cells/2455 "2019-10-08T19:27:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 6

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**Author:** ![mbostock](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/mbostock/32/9_2.png) [@mbostock](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/mbostock)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 10:08pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/rendering-imported-cells/2455/6 "2019-10-08T22:08:19Z")

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The issue is that the _observer_ function you pass to [_runtime_.module](https://github.com/observablehq/runtime#runtime_module) is only invoked for symbols that are defined by the notebook itself, not for symbols that are imported. So, you need to give the cell that references the imported cell a name (as @bgchen suggested) in order to make it available for embedding.

But I think we can fix this on our side so that imported symbols are observable too (_i.e._, the _observer_ function is invoked for each import in addition to cells defined in the main notebook), and then you won’t need to give imported symbols an additional name for embeds.

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