but here is my problem: I clicked “share” for the notebook and set an email address, but the person with that email address gets a “not found” message. I changed to the Classic interface and clicked “link share” and the person with the invitee address (and anybody, which I don’t want) can access the notebook. What is needed other than clicking “share” and entering an email address to enable sharing? Also, where is this basic share and link share option documented? Can the Observable Introduction notebook be expanded with documentation on this?
In the “Next” interface, there is a new meaning of “sharing” which is: allowing other people to edit your notebook.
If you just want someone to be able to read a notebook, if you are in Next you can choose the “publish” option, and then choose to publish an “unlisted” notebook. Then anyone with the URL will be able to see it, but it won’t show up in the feed of published notebooks, won’t show up in other people’s search results, etc.
The panel that pops up in Next when you click publish looks like this. Notice how I switched the radio button to “unlisted”:
We definitely over-used the ‘Sharing’ word, and decided to, in the Next interface (which you can switch to when you are in a notebook, or opt into the experimental features on your user profile), change ‘Link Sharing’ to be more accurately called ‘Unlisted Publishing’. That does, however, as you mention in your original post, share it with anyone who happens to have the URL.
What you were looking to do by clicking Share and entering an email address, should have worked, frankly. If it didn’t I think there may be a bug we need to investigate. Would you mind sharing a bit more detail about that (either here or just email support@observablehq.com with the details, especially since we may want to look at the email address, the email he/she received and some more detailed debugging information).
@jrus I think he is trying to share the notebook without publishing or link sharing. As in, the share window where you can share a private notebook with up to 4 other people.
@smithGit When you enter an email address to share the notebook with, we send an email to that email address with an invitation code and a button that would give you access to that page. If you are trying to access it without the invitation code, it will not work. Did you receive such an email? You may need to check your junk mail folder if you don’t see it in your inbox.
Thanks to all. I think the problem is largely finding the right documentation for this, as once I found it, all was clear and it works great - IF the addressee is willing to create an Observable account. This link describes the process: Personal Sharing / Observable / Observable but I only found it today. The documentation is great once you know what you are doing and have found it, but isn’t that too late? Request a means to guide a new user to the appropriate documentation for sharing (possibly change “share” in menu to “personal share”), also clarify that once an addressee receives the email, they will need to create an Observable account. I was not initially aware that a shared addressee would need to do this. (Since this turns out to be a non-problem, suggest the topic and thread be deleted from forum - especially if improved means of guiding user to the documentation is implemented.) This inquiry/request can be closed.
