# How to refer to a stack in another region

**URL:** <https://forum.serverless.com/t/how-to-refer-to-a-stack-in-another-region/6255>\
**Category:** Serverless Framework\
**Tags:** cloudformation\
**Created:** [October 25, 2018, 6:21pm UTC](https://forum.serverless.com/t/how-to-refer-to-a-stack-in-another-region/6255 "2018-10-25T18:21:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![henhal](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/forum.serverless.com/henhal/32/2671_2.png) [@henhal](https://forum.serverless.com/u/henhal)\
**Post date:** [October 25, 2018, 6:21pm UTC](https://forum.serverless.com/t/how-to-refer-to-a-stack-in-another-region/6255/1 "2018-10-25T18:21:30Z")

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Hi,

Let’s say I have 5 stacks in AWS region eu-central-1. Then I have one stack in eu-west-1 (because SES is not available in eu-central-1). This last stack depends on some ARN:s from the other stacks, so I use a construct like:

`${{cf:${{file(../output/${{self:provider.stage}}-other-stack.json):TableStackName}}.TableNameARN}}`

However, this fails, saying that the stack does not exist. I know that the stack does in fact exist in eu-central-1, so I suspect that serverless is trying to refer to the stack in the region of the referencing stack, eu-west-1.

How can I refer to a stack in another region to fetch ARNs and other output parameters?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![buggy](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/forum.serverless.com/buggy/32/177_2.png) [@buggy](https://forum.serverless.com/u/buggy)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2018, 10:25am UTC](https://forum.serverless.com/t/how-to-refer-to-a-stack-in-another-region/6255/2 "2018-10-26T10:25:22Z")

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> You can’t create cross-stack references across regions. You can use the intrinsic function `Fn::ImportValue` to import only values that have been exported within the same region.

> **[Fn::ImportValue - AWS CloudFormation](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/intrinsic-function-reference-importvalue.html)**
>
> Return a value shared across multiple AWS CloudFormation stacks using the Fn::ImportValue intrinsic function.

You’ll need to manually lookup the ARN and set them in your other `serverless.yml` files.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![henhal](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/forum.serverless.com/henhal/32/2671_2.png) [@henhal](https://forum.serverless.com/u/henhal)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2018, 10:42am UTC](https://forum.serverless.com/t/how-to-refer-to-a-stack-in-another-region/6255/3 "2018-10-26T10:42:10Z")

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Thanks!

FWIW, I ended up restructuring my stacks to avoid inter-stack dependencies altogether. In my case, that meant extracting a really small stack only holding my AWS SES templates - deployed in eu-west-1 - and moving related lambda functions to another stack in the same region as all my other stacks.

The only issue is a soft implicit dependency to the SES template names, since I cannot refer to them through the stack output, but I can live with that for now.