diff --git a/doc/conf.py b/doc/conf.py
index 6651383fcacb..96106c2d1f33 100644
--- a/doc/conf.py
+++ b/doc/conf.py
@@ -299,6 +299,7 @@ def autodoc_process_bases(app, name, obj, options, bases):
     'doc_module': ('matplotlib', 'mpl_toolkits'),
     'examples_dirs': example_dirs,
     'filename_pattern': '^((?!sgskip).)*$',
+    'ignore_pattern': r'(__init__|basic_units)\.py',
     'gallery_dirs': gallery_dirs,
     'image_scrapers': (matplotlib_reduced_latex_scraper, ),
     'image_srcset': ["2x"],
@@ -314,7 +315,7 @@ def autodoc_process_bases(app, name, obj, options, bases):
     'thumbnail_size': (320, 224),
     'within_subsection_order': gallery_order_subsectionorder,
     'capture_repr': (),
-    'copyfile_regex': r'.*\.rst',
+    'copyfile_regex': r'(.*\.rst|.*basic_units\.(py|ipynb))',
 }
 
 if parse_version(sphinx_gallery.__version__) >= parse_version('0.17.0'):
diff --git a/galleries/examples/units/basic_units.ipynb b/galleries/examples/units/basic_units.ipynb
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..3eecc79137c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/galleries/examples/units/basic_units.ipynb
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+{
+ "cells": [
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "# Basic units\n",
+    "\n",
+    "This notebook accompanies `basic_units.py`, the helper module used by the units gallery examples."
+   ]
+  }
+ ],
+ "metadata": {
+  "kernelspec": {
+   "display_name": "Python 3",
+   "language": "python",
+   "name": "python3"
+  },
+  "language_info": {
+   "name": "python"
+  }
+ },
+ "nbformat": 4,
+ "nbformat_minor": 5
+}
diff --git a/galleries/users_explain/axes/axes_units.py b/galleries/users_explain/axes/axes_units.py
index 2cabb0de350a..4f2ffb02c574 100644
--- a/galleries/users_explain/axes/axes_units.py
+++ b/galleries/users_explain/axes/axes_units.py
@@ -267,7 +267,7 @@
 #
 # The support for dates and categories is part of "units" support that is built
 # into Matplotlib.  This is described at `.matplotlib.units` and in the
-# :ref:`basic_units` example.
+# :ref:`units examples <units-examples-index>`.
 #
 # Unit support works by querying the type of data passed to the plotting
 # function and dispatching to the first converter in a list that accepts that