@ms_brunette you're welcome! Always happy to help. Also, my apologies, angular.element(htmlelrnent), I misunderstood the jqlite reference.
So HTML string or DOMElement should be the value in the element method. It will return a jQuery object.
https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/function/angular.element
Feel free to post another forum question if you are unable to find a solution via the search box.
Fox