Section Manager

Google Docs™ add-on

Remove large sections of text. Manage your document's structure.

Section Manager lists every heading in your document, from Heading 1 to Heading 6. Delete a section and everything nested beneath it in one action, drag it somewhere else, or change its level — and anything you remove waits in History until you bring it back.

Add to Google Docs — free Try the live demo
Only sees the document you have open Your document never leaves Google Free to start

Try it — nothing to install

The actual sidebar, running in your browser.

The sidebar as it ships, down to the row colours. Tick a section and press Delete — it leaves the document with everything nested under it, lands in History, and comes back exactly where it was.

At the end of the document are four lines that were only ever bolded or underlined, the kind every real document has. ⚙ → Scan for headings turns them into real ones.

Quarterly Project Report Live demo
Quarterly Project Report
Prepared for the Steering Committee · Q2
Recolour it

Deleting a heading takes its sub-sections with it. Press Undo on the toast, or open History and press Insert — either way it returns to its original position, not the end of the document.

One permission, and it's the narrow one.

Section Manager asks for documents.currentonly — access to the single document you have open, and nothing else in your Drive. It never requests the broad Drive permission that lets an add-on read every file in your account.

Your section index, your History and your settings are stored by Google, inside your own document and account. No document content is transmitted anywhere — the only request the add-on ever makes is a Pro licence check, which carries a key and an anonymous installation id and nothing from your document. Details in the privacy policy.

Approving this for an organisation? Here's the full scope table →

What it does

The outline is the interface.

Section Manager reads the headings already in your document and gives you a panel to work with them. Nothing to configure, no template system to learn.

All features →

Every heading, properly nested

Heading 1 through Heading 6, plus Title style, each shown in its own colour and indented to match the document's structure. Collapse a branch you're not working on.

Headings out of a document that has none

Opened a document where the headings were only ever bolded and made bigger? The add-on spots those lines — bold, underlined, or a couple of points larger than the text beneath them — and offers to turn them into real headings, so you get an outline out of a document that never had one.

Search, sort and jump

Filter a long outline by name, sort by document order or A–Z, and click the magnifier on any row to move your cursor straight to that heading in the document.

A guided tour, whenever you want it

Twelve steps through the panel, each control highlighted as it's explained. Offered the first time you open it, and restartable from Additional settings any time after that.

Six levels, your colours

You read the structure before you read a word.

Each heading level has its own shade, darkest at the top — so in a hundred-heading document you see the shape of it at a glance. On Pro, pick any base colour and the whole ramp regenerates around it, with text contrast worked out for you.

Heading 1#235280
Heading 2#4C7FAC
Heading 3#8CB4D6
Heading 4#C3DAEC
Heading 5#E1EDF6
Heading 6#F3F8FB

Pro  Or set any of the fifteen slots — seven heading levels and eight buttons — individually, by colour wheel or hex code. Try it on the demo above →

The obvious question

Google Docs already has an outline. Why this?

Because the built-in outline is for getting somewhere. It shows your headings and jumps to them, and it's very good at that. It has never been able to change the document.

Capability
Built-in outline
Section Manager
See every heading, nested
Jump to a heading
Delete a heading and everything under it
Delete several sections at once
Bring a deleted section back, in place
Change a heading's level
Drag a section to reorder it
Move a branch under a different parent
Search and sort the outline
Templates, tags and numbering
Colour-code levels, dark mode

Keep using the built-in outline for navigation — Section Manager doesn't replace it and doesn't interfere with it. Open the sidebar when you need to change the structure rather than move through it.

Inside the sidebar

The parts the demo doesn't show.

The panel above covers the day-to-day. Here's what sits behind the settings gear and the confirmation step.

Section Manager
Title#14263B
Heading 1#235280
Heading 2#4C7FAC
Heading 3#8CB4D6
Refresh#1E824C
Delete#C0392B
Settings — colours Fifteen slots, each with a colour wheel and a hex field, plus a generator that builds the whole set from one colour.

These are rendered from the add-on's own stylesheet rather than photographed — swap in real screenshots once the Marketplace listing images are ready.

See it work

Two minutes, start to finish.

A long report trimmed down to the sections that matter — then one of them brought straight back from History.

Section Manager — product demo 2:04
No sign-up to watch Recorded in a real document Captions included

How it works

Three steps, once.

Set it up in a couple of minutes, then it's just part of how you work.

Install

Add it from the Marketplace

Install it on your account, or let a Workspace admin deploy it across the domain. It appears under Extensions, and can open itself whenever you open a document.

Detect

Open any document with headings

The panel reads the outline straight away, colouring and nesting each level. Edit the document directly and it notices and re-syncs on its own.

Reshape

Delete, drag, re-level or tag

Tick what you don't need and confirm once. Drag a section by its handle, change a level, insert a new section, tag it, number it. Undo is on the toast; deletions wait in History.

Before you install

Questions, and the things worth knowing.

Better to read the second tab now than discover it mid-document.

What can Section Manager see?

The document you have open, and only while you're in it. The add-on requests documents.currentonly, which is scoped to the active document — it cannot list, open or read anything else in your Drive.

Where is my data stored?

In your own Google account. The section index, History and the document's tags live in the document's own properties; your settings and your templates live in your user properties. Both are Google storage.

The only things held anywhere else are a Pro licence record — the key, an anonymous installation id and any label you chose to type — and, on Pro, your organisation's shared settings. No part of your document is included in either.

What happens to a section when I delete it?

It moves to History with its text and formatting, remembering the paragraph it followed. Insert puts it back in that position — resolved against the document as it is now, so it still lands correctly even if you've edited around it since.

Images are the exception: they aren't preserved, and the add-on warns you before you confirm.

Can I reorder sections, and can I re-nest them?

Both. Drag a section by the handle at the left of its row to move it among its siblings, carrying its body text and sub-sections with it. You can also drop it under a different parent entirely, and its level is adjusted to fit where it lands.

A longer drag runs as a series of single steps with a progress bar, and finishes with an Undo button that reverses the whole move. The Level button is still there if you'd rather promote or demote without moving anything.

What are templates and tags for?

Templates are sections you write often — a risk register, a standard appendix — saved once and inserted into any document. You get 20, stored against your account, so they follow you between files.

Tags label a section's state. Two come built in — Needs review and Final — and you can define up to 12 of your own. You apply one by clicking the small dot at the left of a row and picking from the list. They're stored with the document, so anyone who opens it sees the same labels. Pro adds a set shared across your whole organisation.

Can I number the sections automatically?

Yes, and it's off until you turn it on. Numbering is set per document, and you choose how many levels deep it goes, so you can number the top two levels of a report and leave the rest alone. It stays correct as you delete, drag and re-level.

Does it work with Google Docs tabs?

Yes. It reads the tab you're currently working in.

Can I deploy it across my organisation?

Yes — a Workspace administrator can install it domain-wide from the Google Workspace Marketplace. The Teams page covers seats and shared settings, and the admin page has the scope table and the data-residency answers, written for whoever has to approve it.

Can I change the colours?

On Pro, all of them. Seven heading levels and eight buttons can each be set by colour wheel or hex code, and there's a generator: pick one colour and it builds a matching ramp plus consistent buttons, choosing white or dark text for each so everything stays readable. Try it on the demo above.

There's a dark mode too, and your colour choices carry across both themes rather than being overridden.

Is there a keyboard workflow?

Yes. Arrow keys move through the outline, Delete or Backspace selects and deselects the focused section, Enter deletes the current selection, and Escape leaves the search box.

Stop scrolling to find the end of a section.

It's free. Install it and try it on a document you're already working on.

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