My use-case is to share a grist table with very non-technical users (web browsing and email proficient only). The best way I’ve found with this type of non-technical user is either via pdf or html file. I prefer a html file as the user just opens the file in a browser, which they are familiar with.
These are the options I have investigated so far are:
Export csv/dsv/tsv file: Formatting is not preserved and too complicated for a non-technical user
Export excel file: Formatting is not preserved and too complicated for a non-technical user. You can export from excel to an html file, but formatting would need to be reproduced.
Print to pdf file: Table and markdown formatting (e.g. url links) not preserved
Save Page As … mhtml file from a browser: This does save the table as a single file, including all formatting, which is easily opened in a browser. However, it displays the entire Grist page including the Grist top, left and right control panels, which the user user doesn’t need to see and could be confusing.
Is there a way to export a grist table only as a formatted html/mhtml file?
Just to mention another option, you could add “?embed=true” to the url, perhaps also after “/m/view” to make sure editing is off for all users including yourself. That will share your current page with some extra bits removed. It would look like this:
After some real world testing of this method of sharing mhtml files. I found that for some users using mobile devices, they could not open the mhtml file, even thought they had Chrome installed. I’m not sure if this was caused by user error, Chrome, security settings, or something else.
So I came up with an single file html option using the SingleFile browser extension:
Add `/m/view?embed=true` to the end of the table url
Invoke the SingleFile extension to save table as a .html file
Send the resulting .html file to the user.
This seems to have resolved this issue, so I hope this helps someone else out.