Sharing a screenplay: which files, who can open it, for how long

In one line: how to turn a screenplay into a read-only link for a producer or a director — which files to tick, whether to freeze the version, password and expiry, and why notes on the draft still come back through Slima's own comments.

Create Share Link
Select Files   Select All · Deselect All · 3 file(s) selected
Version   ( Latest | Locked )
Visibility   ( Link Only | Password )
Details   Title · Author · Description
Expires After   7 · 14 · 30 · 90 days · Never
Allow Copy   on
  Manage all links        Create Share Link

Sharing is one thing for the whole book now

The old Script Studio had its own share dialog, reached from the Deliver view and the Write toolbar. Both entry points left with the studio. Screenplays now use the same sharing as manuscripts — same dialog, same public reading page, same list of links.

Two places to open it:

• Desktop: the Share (Share2) icon in the row of small icons at the top of the left file panel.
• Phone: the share icon in the top bar.

What to include: tick the real file tree

That table in the old article — the four groups Screenplay (scenes) / Character data / Scene board / Notes — is out of date. Three of the four are records that no longer exist, and the "Screenplay (scenes)" row said you could include only some of the scenes, which is no longer possible.

What you tick now is this book's file tree: folders start collapsed, ticking a folder ticks everything under it, a partial selection shows as indeterminate, and above the tree are Select All / Deselect All and N file(s) selected.

Screenplay/
  Episode 01 - The Copyist Girl.script
  Episode 02 - The Word Bureau.script
Notes/
  Screenplay Outline.md
  Story Skeleton.beats

Tickable: .md / .txt (manuscript and planning files), .script screenplays, .map relationship maps, .geomap world maps, .timeline timelines, .beats beat boards.

Not in the tree at all: images and .pdf are filtered out of the picker, so don't go hunting for them. The public reading page has no way to render media, so being able to tick one only got your reader a blank page — the option was closed. Legacy .character / .location files and .json / .yaml stay out of the picker too.

Version: which draft they see

The old article didn't cover this control, and it's often the one that matters most:

For a submission, a production company, or anyone in a legal review, choose Locked — you don't want someone reading a scene while you rewrite it. Locked needs a version to freeze first (taking a manual version); Latest needs the sync to have finished. The dialog says which one is missing.

Visibility, expiry, copying

• Expires After: 7 / 14 / 30 / 90 days, or never.
• Allow Copy: whether readers can copy the text out. On by default.

The Details section has three fields: Title, Author, Description.

What the recipient sees

What opens is not the Slima editor, it's the public reading page (in full: Reader View for recipients). A screenplay is shown in screenplay layout there — scene headings, centred character names, indented dialogue — following that file's own Taiwanese or Hollywood setting. The sidebar lists whichever files you ticked.

One small thing worth doing first: the title of a screenplay on the reading page comes from the file's own title, so rename the file in the file tree to whatever you want them to see (Episode 01.script → Episode 01 - The Copyist Girl.script) before you share, and the public page reads right. (Older docs say renaming the file doesn't affect the title — that was the behaviour before rename started syncing it.)

Notes on the draft: no comments on the link, comments inside Slima

This needs stating plainly, because only the first half of the old sentence — "recipients are read-only, and Reader View has no comments" — is still the whole truth.

A share link is a read-only reading page with no comment feature on it. Whoever has the link needs no Slima account, and has nowhere to reply — so the director's notes still come back by email or message.

Comments do exist, and they got more precise, but they are a feature of the book: right-click any line of the screenplay and the menu has Add Comment and Suggest Edit. A comment anchors to that line — not to the scene, and not to a character offset — so rewriting the dialogue later, or accepting an AI change, doesn't set it adrift. Long-press a line on a phone for the same menu.

How comments actually work — replying, marking one handled — is in comments and threads.

Managing the links you've made

Click Manage all links in the dialog to switch to manage mode, which lists the links for this book. Each row shows:

Two actions per row: Copy Link and Revoke.

An existing link can't be edited. Scope, version mode, expiry and password are fixed the moment you create it — to change any of them, revoke and create a new one. So if all you want is a time limit, set the expiry at creation; it's cleaner than revoking later.

To see every book at once, the account area has an all share links page: active and expired tabs, load more, and revoking your selection or everything in one go. That's the page for after a round of readings, when you want every link out there closed.

Related

• Docs: Delivery: exporting an episode as PDF / Word / Fountain
• Docs: Public share links, in full
• Docs: Reader View for recipients
• Docs: Comments and threads
• Docs: Taking a manual version
• Docs: The sync status indicator
• Docs: What you see when you open a screenplay file