You asked an assistant something useful and now a colleague needs to see it.

There are two ways to move it, and they are not interchangeable. A link to the live conversation, or a copy of the answer itself. The difference matters a great deal if the underlying document is protected.

Sharing the conversation

Every answer carries a share control. On a phone it opens your device's native share sheet. On a desktop it copies a link.

What the recipient gets is the full thread, every question and answer up to the point you shared, citations included, laid out under the document's own cover, title and introduction. They see what they are reading rather than a stack of orphaned paragraphs. No Docutrain account required.

They can usually keep going, too. New questions extend the shared thread, and the response-style control and answer actions all work normally. Multi-document conversations keep their multi-document context.

The nicest touch is what happens with collections. Share from a chat you opened inside a collection and the link opens that collection with the thread loaded, so the recipient lands on the collection page with its document list and sidebar and continues from there. They inherit your context rather than a decontextualized transcript.

Sharing is hidden inside embedded widgets, since a share link out of an embed would send someone somewhere the host site never intended.

This is the part to be precise about.

The shared page still enforces the document's access rules. A passcode document asks the recipient for the passcode. A members-only document asks them to sign in. A disclaimer, where one is configured, still has to be accepted. Sharing a conversation never exposes a protected document to someone who could not have opened it themselves. See access levels explained.

What the link is, though, is a key. Share links are long random codes and are listed nowhere, but anyone holding one can open it, and on a public document that means anyone at all. Treat a link to a sensitive discussion the way you would treat the discussion.

One thing to know about the other direction: if a conversation is removed by moderation, its share link stops working, and you are not notified. Shared conversations are not a separate moderation queue, they are the same records in the conversation viewer, so the tools there apply to them.

When a shared page goes read-only

Sometimes the thread appears but the message box is switched off. Docutrain never leaves that unexplained. An amber notice sits above the conversation giving the actual reason, ending with a plain statement that the conversation is shown read-only.

The document might have been removed. It might have been a multi-document conversation where the recipient can reach only part of it. Access might have been withdrawn since you shared it.

In every case the conversation is still shown in full. Access having changed does not retroactively hide what was already shared, and a recipient is never left staring at a blank page working out whether it is broken or whether they are.

Two cases interrupt without going read-only. If the owner rotated a passcode since the recipient last visited, the page discards the stored passcode and asks for the current one rather than failing silently. And a shared thread arrives with its history already filled in, so it reaches the conversation-length limits sooner than a fresh chat would. When that happens you get a notice suggesting a New Chat for a new topic, and the button starts a clean conversation with the same document while leaving the shared thread above it untouched.

Exporting the answer instead

If it is the answer rather than the conversation that needs to travel, use Export response.

It offers two things: copy to clipboard as plain text, or email a formatted PDF to an address you type in.

The PDF is better than a screenshot for one specific reason. It carries the formatted response including tables and, where they were shown, the source citations, and it is labeled with the document's title, category, year, and the owning organization's name.

That labeling is what makes an exported answer usable three months later, in a report or an email thread, when nobody can remember which assistant it came from or which edition of the guideline it reflected. An unlabeled screenshot of an AI answer is close to worthless as evidence. A labeled PDF with citations is something you can put in front of someone.

The same export window serves the Abstract tool, so a document's AI-written overview can be emailed as a PDF the same way. See the tools that sit beside the chat.

Which one to reach for

The trade-off is worth stating outright.

A share link is live. It can be continued, it stays subject to the document's access rules, and it disappears if the conversation is moderated or the document is deleted.

An exported PDF is a snapshot. It survives access changes and document deletion entirely, which is sometimes exactly what you want and sometimes exactly what you should worry about. Once a PDF is in someone's inbox, no access rule of yours reaches it.

For a colleague who should be able to keep asking, share the link. For a record that has to outlive the document, export the PDF, and think for a second about who will end up holding it.

When the document runs out of answers

Sharing an answer often ends with a question the document does not cover. That is what the contact routes are for.

Where the owner enabled it, a Contact tool opens a short form and emails the owner with the reader's address as the reply-to, so a reply goes straight back. Landing and gallery pages can carry their own version. Neither needs an account.

There is one quiet design decision behind that control worth knowing about. It is shown to readers only after the recipient address has confirmed it is willing to receive that mail. Until then it does not appear at all. Nobody is handed a form whose messages would go nowhere, and nobody can point a document's contact form at an address they do not control.