Collapsing and Expanding Elements

Collapsing and expanding some elements helps you author very large documents effectively.

Serna can open large documents with some elements collapsed.

Also, you can collapse and expand elements yourself.

Note:

Elements that can be collapsed in a document of a particular type are listed in a corresponding document template. If they are not specified, any element can be collapsed. For details, see the folding-list element in ../developers_guide/document-template-properties.html#doc-template-properties__folding-and-large-document-support).

To collapse and expand elements manually, do the following:

Collapse elements.
1. Collapse an element.
  To collapse an element, do the following:
  1. Place the cursor in the element in the Editing Window or click the element in the ContentMap.
  2. Choose View > Collapse Element , or press Ctrl-.
    
    Figure 1. The section element collapsed.
  Note:
  If there is a Folding List for your document, collapsing will collapse not the current element but the closest parent element that is mentioned on the list. Suppose you frequently collapse chapters and sections, but never paras. If you want to quickly collapse the current section without moving the cursor from the current para, you can narrow the list of collapsible elements. For details, see the folding-list element in ../developers_guide/document-template-properties.html#doc-template-properties__folding-and-large-document-support.
2. Collapse several elements.
  To collapse several elements, do the following:
  1. Select the elements in the Editing Window or in the ContentMap.
  2. Choose View > Collapse Element , or press Ctrl-., or right-click the selection and select Collapse Element from the context menu.
    
    Figure 2. Selected elements collapsed.
3. Collapse an ancestor.
  To collapse an ancestor of an element, do the following:
  1. Place the cursor in the element in the Editing Window or click the element in the ContentMap.
  2. Choose View > Collapse > <ANCESTOR_NAME> , or right-click the element and select Collapse > <ANCESTOR_NAME> from the context menu.
Expand elements.
1. Expand a collapsed element only.
  To expand the current collapsed element (but not its child elements if some of them are collapsed), do one of the following:
  - Choose View > Expand .
  - Press Ctrl-,
  - Right-click the element and select Expand from the context menu.
  - Double-click the yellow rectangle of the collapsed element in the Editing Window.
2. Expand a collapsed element and its collapsed children.
  To expand the current element and all its collapsed child elements, do one of the following:
  - Choose View > Expand Subtree .
  - Right-click the element and select Expand Subtree from the context menu.
3. Expand all collapsed elements.
  To expand all the collapsed elements in the document, choose View > Expand All .