A content management system (CMS) synchronization mechanism synchronizes content attributes, preferably in metadata, with content documents. For each of one or more content attributes (e.g. metadata fields), a respective content document context is associated. Each attribute is synchronized to content in the content document according to the associated context. Preferably, the content document contains multiple nested files, and context limits synchronization to a subset of files. Synchronization rules, enforced by a synchronization engine, define respective attributes and content to be synchronized, each rule having an associated context in the content document. Rules are preferably created in XML format, and parsed to produce a document object model upon which the synchronization engine operates.