Insert custom building blocks

Custom building blocks are only available for eligible work or school accounts, and you're not currently signed in. Learn more about work and school accounts.

Sign in to your work account

If you're using Google Docs on an eligible work or school account, you can turn content in your document into a custom building block so that you can quickly reuse it in the future.

Important: You can only create custom building blocks from a document if you're able to copy content. If you are unable to copy content, contact the document owner and ask them to give you copy access to the document.

1. On your computer, open a document in Google Docs.
2. Highlight the content that you want to turn into a building block.
3. Right-click the highlighted content.
4. Click Save as custom building block.
5. Add a name. You can also add an optional description.
6. Click Create  Got it.

Create a custom building block with the '@' menu

1. On your computer, open a document in Google Docs.
2. Type '@custom building block' and click New custom building block .
3. Highlight the content that you want to turn into a building block.
4. In the pop-up at the top, click Save.
5. Add a name. You can also add an optional description.
6. Click Create  Got it.

Use, view and edit custom building blocks

To insert a custom building block:

1. On your computer, open a document in Google Docs.
2. You can either:
   1. Type '@' and enter the name of the custom building block.
   2. At the top, click Insert  Building blocks  Custom building block and select a building block.

View and edit custom building blocks

1. On your computer, open a document in Google Docs.
2. You can either:
   1. Type '@' then, next to 'Building blocks', click Expand .
   2. At the top of the document, click Insert  Building blocks  Custom building block.
3. Click Manage custom blocks. This opens a list of your custom building blocks in Google Drive. New building blocks are saved to a 'Custom building blocks (auto-generated)' folder.

   Tips:

   • The Drive search shows the building blocks that you own – which you can use in documents – and those shared with you by others – which you can edit but can't insert into documents.
   • Custom building blocks that you have recently inserted do not appear under the 'Recent' view in Google Drive.
   • To remove a custom building block, delete the file from your Google Drive.