Salesforce Quip: Share Documents and Folders with Individuals, Groups, and External Users

This article explains how to share documents and folders in Salesforce Quip, including how to add individual people, add content to folders, create shareable links, share with people outside your organization, and remove access. Whether you are tracking a project, planning next year's budget, or just getting your team's lunch order, Quip gets the people you need into the documents you are working on.

The Basics of Sharing in Quip

There are three different ways to share content with other people, and all of them are available through the "Share" button at the top right corner of your document window.

When you click "Share," a modal window appears.

From the modal window, you can:

1. Add individual people by manually entering their names or email addresses.
2. Add a group of people by adding the document to a folder. Anyone who belongs to the folder has access to the documents in it.
3. Get a shareable link for your document by turning on the Shareable Link toggle. Copy the link and send it to whoever you want to share it with.

For every way to share, Quip lets you customize access levels through granular permissions, so you control how many people can edit your content.

Add Individual People to a Quip Document

In the "Add by name or email" field, you can:

• Type the name of anyone in your organization. The name usually autocompletes after the first few characters.
• Click the name of someone in your organization. Quip lists the people you interact with most.
• Type the email address of anyone at all, whether they are part of your organization or not. A red badge indicates a person's organization, and Quip always shows when someone is outside of your organization so you can share responsibly.

• Assign access permissions. With granular permissions, you can make sure the right level of access is given to the right people. For each person you share your document with, you can grant Full Access, Edit Access, Comment Access, or View Only Access.

Add Content to a Quip Folder

To share your document with a group of people, add it to a folder and make sure the group has membership to the folder. This automatically shares your document with everyone who belongs to that folder.

In the search bar, type the name of the folder and click "Share." Manage the folder's access level. Just like when you share with individuals, you can customize a group's interaction with your document through granular permissions.

You can also share a document across multiple folders. Changes made anywhere update the document everywhere, so you do not need to manage versions.

If the folder belongs to 7 people or fewer, all of those people are notified about the document you added. If it belongs to more than 7 people, Quip skips the notification, because for larger groups these notifications can be more cumbersome than helpful.

Note: Every site member has a Private Folder by default. Every time a new document is created, it is housed in your Private Folder. All content in your Private Folder remains private unless the documents are shared. The permission to a folder can be either full access or none by design. There is no read-only or other permission for folders. To learn more about folders, see the Quip folders article in Additional Resources.

Get a Shareable Link for a Quip Document or Folder

You can share a document or folder with other people by sending them a URL that links to it. Go to the document you want to share and turn on the Shareable Link toggle in the "Share" dialog.

To share at the folder level, click the 3 dots button and select Share from the menu. The remaining steps for turning on the Shareable Link toggle are the same as the document sharing example described above.

When the Shareable Link toggle is turned off, the document cannot be accessed using its URL. This is the default setting for new documents.

Because a link can be passed around easily once you send it, there is extra control over what people can do with a document that they reached through a URL:

• "View, edit, and comment" means people can view and edit the document, as well as participate in the conversation pane and inline comments.
• "View Only" means they can view the document, but not edit it.

The "View Only" setting includes additional controls over what a viewer can see:

• "Show conversation" allows viewers to see the conversation pane of your document.
• "Show diffs" includes the edit history of your document in that conversation pane.
• "Allow new messages" allows other users to add to the document conversation (but not edit the document itself).
• "Allow comments" allows other users to leave comments on the document's contents (but not to edit those contents).
• "Allow requests to edit" lets other users ask permission to edit the document's contents.

In both the "View only" and "View & Edit" settings, you also see:

• "Allow access outside of whatever-your-domain-is.com" allows people who are outside of your organization to access the document you are sharing.
• "Notify people at whatever-your-domain-is.com when they're mentioned" ensures the people in your organization stay up to date and connected with relevant notifications.

Keep in mind that "outside of your organization" means anyone outside your organization. If you send a URL to a customer, and that customer sends the URL to someone else, that person can also read your document. Make sure the document does not contain anything you would not want an unintended reader to see.

Share Quip Documents with People Outside Your Organization

Quip makes it as easy to share with people outside of your company as it is to share within it. Always start from the "Share" menu:

1. Type the email address of the person you want to share your work with in the "Add by name or email" field.
2. Turn on the shareable link, then click "Copy" to copy the document's URL to your clipboard (and turn on sharing by URL in the process). You can then send that URL to whoever you want, however you want.

When people from outside your organization (specifically, your site) have joined a document, a badge appears in your document's title bar. Click the badge to open the sharing settings and access the full list of members.

Permissions for External Users Who Open Shared Quip Links

An external user's permission level depends on whether the user has an account:

• Visitors with accounts can access the document per the permissions set at the link level.
• Visitors without accounts can only view your document. They cannot comment on it or edit its contents, and they are prompted to sign up if they want to do either.

Use Restricted External Sharing in Quip

If your company uses Quip Enterprise Tier, it has the option to disable external sharing, or to restrict external sharing to an allowlist of permitted collaborators.

If your company has enabled this setting, you cannot share documents with anyone outside your company unless your administrator has added them to the allowlist. Contact your admin to add your external collaborators. Quip support cannot add external collaborators for you. If you try to share with someone who is not on the allowlist, you see an error message.

You also cannot add any documents to a folder that was created by someone at another company, because that folder and the documents inside could be shared outside your company. Similarly, you cannot add documents or folders to folders that are inside folders created by someone at another company. If you try to add a document to a folder created by someone at another company, you see an error message.

How to See Who a Quip Document Is Shared With

Look at the "Share" button at the top of your document.

• See a number? That is the number of people the document has been shared with.
• Do not see a number? Then you are the only person with access to the document.

To see the specific people on any document, click the "Share" button and click "Manage" to view a complete list.

Share a Nested Sub-Folder in Quip

To share a nested sub-folder with an individual without providing access to the entire top-level folder, follow these steps:

1. Click the "Share" button from within the nested sub-folder.
2. Select "Advanced Options" from the dropdown.
3. Select "Add People to this Folder Only" and type in as many individual names or email addresses as you would like.

Pro tip: Individuals added to a sub-folder appear under "Additional People" in the "Share" dropdown menu.

To see who a sub-folder is shared with:

1. Click the "Share" button of the sub-folder.
2. Select the top-level folder under the "Group" section. This opens a Folder Permissions view, where you can see both the number of members in the top-level folder and the individuals in the sub-folder level.
3. Click either of the numbers to view the specifics of who a folder has been shared with. You can also click "View All Members" to see a complete list.

Request Access to a Quip Document You Cannot Open

Occasionally, you follow a link to a document you do not have access to. To request access, click the "Request Access" button that appears when you try to visit the link.

Everyone who has access to the document is notified about your request. Keep that in mind if you are requesting access to a document that might be shared with a large number of people.

Remove Access to a Quip Document, Spreadsheet, Folder, or Chat Room

The best way to remove access depends on how you shared the content in the first place.

If You Added People Individually

Remove them by clicking the "Share" button, then selecting "Manage." Next to the people you want to remove, click their current access level. In the dropdown menu, click "Remove Access."

If You Added People Through a Shared Folder

You can use the same dropdown menu to "Remove Access." You can also move the document out of that shared folder, or remove people from the folder itself.

• To move it to a different folder, click the "Share" button, select "Move this Folder," and then select "Move to Another Folder." You can move it to a different shared folder to share it with a different set of people, or you can move it to a private folder to stop sharing it with everyone.
• To remove people from the folder itself, go to that folder, click the "Share" button, then select "Remove People." The people you remove lose access to everything in that folder, so make sure there is nothing in there they need.
• Important detail: If you added people to a document individually in addition to adding people through a shared folder, moving that document back to a private folder removes only the folder group. The people you added individually still have access to the document.

If You Added People by Sharing a URL

You can reduce the level of access people have through that URL, or you can disable that URL entirely.

• Important: Disabling links does not affect people who followed the URL and then joined as collaborators. After they add themselves to your content, you must remove them individually by clicking the "Share" button, selecting "Manage," and then selecting "Remove People."