A snippet is an important file used for single-sourcing that authors often insert into topics. You can think of them as miniature topics within topics. They can be formatted just like a topic and they look like they are part of the regular content in a topic, but they are not; they are separate files.
If you open a document that contains a snippet, you'll be able to identify the snippet in a couple of ways:
- You cannot click inside the snippet to edit it. That's because the snippet content is held in a separate snippet file. So if you cannot click in some content to edit it, chances are that it's a snippet.
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If you have markers turned on (by clicking the down arrow next to
in the local toolbar and selecting Show Markers), a snippet marker is represented by brackets.
[Mini-TOC Proxy — Online — Depth1]
Note Although it is possible to open any Contributor files in a third-party editor, it is recommended that you avoid editing these files in certain programs while Contributor is running. For example, opening a stylesheet in Notepad++ is not an issue. But you might experience problems if you open a topic or snippet in Microsoft Word and edit it while Contributor is running.