Managing Snippets

Snippets are brief, reusable blocks of text that can be employed to speed up the creation of highly templated documents. Snippets Express allows you to create, store, and call up your own snippets for insertion into documents you prepare without leaving Google Docs.

The Snippets Express user interface in the Google Docs side panel presents your snippets as individual cards displaying title you have given to each snippet. Each of these cards can be expanded to reveal, up to a certain limit, the text of the snippet and operations that you can perform on it, as detailed below.

There are two ways to insert a snippet into your document from the Google Docs sidebar using Snippets Express. You can execute a 'quick insert' without expanding the card corresponding to the snippet or, if you wish to review the text of the snippet first, you can unroll the card to reveal the Insert button.

QUICK INSERT

1. Click to place your text cursor in the document at the position where you would like to insert a snippet.

2. In the sidebar, hover your mouse cursor over the snippet you wish to insert.

3. A button will appear to the right of the snippet title. Click this button to insert the snippet into the doc.

REGULAR INSERT

1. Click to place the cursor in your document at the position where you would like to insert a snippet.

2. Unroll the snippet you wish to insert by clicking the Unroll button to the left of snippet's title.

3. Click Insert in the bottom left of the expanded card for the snippet.

Snippets Express allows you to expand your bank of snippets by saving new snippets to your library without leaving your active document. While the add-on is open, you can create a new snippet by selecting text already available within your document or by composing it from scratch. The former option allows you to preserve rich formatting you've applied to the selected text in the Docs editor. The steps below outline how to create a snippet using either of these two methods.

CREATE A SNIPPET FROM TEXT IN THE DOCS EDITOR

1. In the Docs editor for your active document, select the text you'd like to turn into a new snippet.

2. With the text in the previous step still selected, click on the plus sign icon in the sidebar menu. A dialog box will open in the same window pre-filled with the text you've selected.

3. Enter a title for this new snippet in the corresponding input field in the dialog.

4. Check the box at the bottom of the dialog to save the formatting of your selected text as part of this new snippet. This setting will preserve the font family, size, and color of your selection as well as all highlighted, bolded, italicized, and underlined portions of that text. If the box is checked, the text cannot be revised in the dialog. This step is optional.

5. Click Create at the bottom of the dialog.

6. Once the dialog closes, click on Resume in the sidebar.

7. Find your newly created snippet at the top of your list of snippets in the sidebar.

CREATE A SNIPPET FROM SCRATCH

1. Click on the plus sign icon in the sidebar menu. A dialog box will open in the active window.

2. Enter a title and some text for the new snippet in the corresponding input fields of the dialog box, then click Create.

3. Once the dialog closes, click on Resume in the sidebar.

4. Find your newly created snippet at the top of your list of snippets in the sidebar.

The following steps detail how to change the title and content of one of your snippets or how you can delete the snippet altogether.

Note: the content of richly formatted snippets cannot be revised using this method - if you wish to do so, you should simply save a new snippet and follow these steps to delete the old.

1. In the Docs sidebar, expand the snippet you want to edit by clicking the arrow to the left of its title.

2. Once expanded, click the Edit button appearing at the bottom of the card containing the snippet. A dialog will open in the active window.

3. Revise the title or the text of the snippet displayed in the dialog in the text inputs provided in the dialog. Once you are happy with your changes, click Save in the bottom left of the dialog. Alternatively, click Delete if you wish to permanently remove the snippet from your library.

Snippets Express provides a convenient means of searching through your library of snippets from within Google Docs. By conducting a search using the steps below, the add-on sidebar will display items containing text matching the query you input into the search box.

1. Click on the magnifying glass icon in the sidebar menu. This will reveal a search text input.

2. Type your search query into the search text input. Press the Enter key on your keyboard to search.