Sharing a document

Sharing one document

1. Open the document and choose to share it.
2. Type the email address of the person you want, and pick what they may do: Viewer, Commenter or Editor.
3. Choose Invite. They appear in the list below straight away.

The three levels

• Viewer can read it, and nothing else.
• Commenter can read it and leave comments in the margin, but cannot change a word of the document.
• Editor can change it the way you can.

Someone who can read but not edit is told so at the top of the document, so nobody is left wondering why typing does nothing.

Sharing a folder

Share a folder and everything inside it is shared, including documents you add to it later. For a body of work that grows, such as a project, this is far less effort than granting access a document at a time.

When access comes from two places

Somebody can end up with access twice over: once because you shared the document with them, and once because they have the folder it sits in. When the two disagree, the more generous one wins. An editor on the folder and a viewer on the document is an editor.

The list of people always says where their access came from, so an entry reading Inherited from Project notes is telling you that removing it here will not work: it is managed on that folder.

When two people are in at once

There is no live cursor following somebody else around the page, and there is not going to be. What happens instead is simpler and harder to lose work to.

If somebody else is already writing in a document you open, you are told at the top of it: Sarah is writing in this document. You can read it until they stop. The document is yours to read, and becomes yours to edit once they are done.

Changed elsewhere

The other case is a document that changed underneath you: you had it open in a second tab, or somebody edited it while your laptop was asleep. The save indicator reads Changed elsewhere.

Docmode stops and tells you rather than choosing for you. It does not merge the two versions automatically, because an automatic merge of two people's prose is how a paragraph quietly ends up half of each.

Taking access away

Change somebody's role in the list at any time, or remove them entirely. It takes effect immediately.

If their access is inherited from a folder, change it on that folder. The list tells you which folder to go to.

What sharing is not

Sharing is not publishing. A shared document stays private: only the people you named can open it, and they sign in to do it. A published page is a public web address that anybody can read.

Comments are also not part of publishing. They never appear on a published page or in an exported file. Comments explains why.