Exporting documents

<!-- Reviewed 2026-09-02 (saving a document updates its processes and its agent): the Word export now serves the CURRENT text by default to everyone (the document is live); `?version=published` still returns the last published version when one exists. The "Which text is exported" note below says so. --> <!-- Reviewed 2026-08-29 (history lines name sections and kinds of work): the covered activity module's document moment lines now name the sections the writing landed in and break the flat change count into kinds (rewordings, additions, …). Exports read the audit log, not the moments feed — nothing this page documents changed. --> <!-- Reviewed 2026-08-27 (one revision story — risk sessions): the covered activity module's document moments now carry the author's name in their meta line. Exports read the audit log, not the moments feed — nothing this page documents changed. --> <!-- Reviewed 2026-08-20 (the restore confirm names how much it steps over): the covered document surfaces changed only where returning to an editing session is confirmed — the dialog now counts the later changes it would replace, computed from the moments list the panel already holds. The activity CSV and its columns are untouched. Nothing this page documents changed; the act itself is described on [Versions and history](/docs/review/versions). --> <!-- Reviewed 2026-08-19 (one history): the covered activity module lost its two panel components — the trail now reads inside Version history — and was renamed to match. The CSV export this page documents is untouched: same route, same columns, same one Download window. Nothing this page documents changed. -->

Which text is exported. The Word copy is the document as it reads now — the same text your readers and your processes read. When the document has a published version and you want that record instead, ask for it explicitly (?version=published on the download link); a document that has never been published has only one text, and that is what you get. Work does not stay inside Alchex. An auditor asks for a copy, a supplier needs the procedure as an attachment, someone wants the change history in a spreadsheet. There are two exports, and they answer different questions.

One Download, on every record

Download sits in the ⋯ menu of every record — a document, a register — and it opens the same window every time. Pick what you want, press Download, and that is the whole of it.

What is in the window depends on the record. A document offers a copy of itself and its activity log; a register offers the view you are looking at or the whole workbook. Each line says what you get, so you are choosing between outcomes rather than between file extensions. You never have to remember where a particular kind keeps its exports, because they all keep them in one place — and that place is the only place. There is no second export button hiding in a panel header or a table menu — both of those existed until 2026-08-18, and what they produced is now a choice in this window.

Taking everything at once

Where a record's things are genuinely separate files, the window's last choice is Everything, as a .zip — one file holding all of them. It is the fastest answer to "send me that document", because it is one decision and one download instead of two.

It is not offered where one of the choices is already everything. A register's workbook holds every table as its own sheet, so zipping it would change its extension and nothing else.

A file-backed document is the one case where it is not offered. Its original file is served straight from storage rather than through Alchex, so it cannot be folded into a zip we assemble — and a bundle that quietly left it out would be worse than no bundle at all. Download the file and the activity log separately there.

Downloading a document

Open the document, choose Download from the ⋯ menu, and pick what you want. What the first choice gives you depends on what kind of document it is:

Anyone who can open the document can download it. The file is named after the document, and non-Latin characters in the title survive on any current browser.

Which version you get

The window carries a Version control on an authored document, because this is a real question and the answer changes what leaves the building. It offers Current draft and Approved version.

A Reader always gets the version in force, whichever is picked. Where a version has been approved, that is what downloads — the one approved for use, never somebody's working copy. Where none has been approved, the document is active at v1 and its current content is what downloads, stamped Active v1 — no approval on record so nobody can mistake it for an approved copy. Nothing is refused: a reader can always take away the document their colleagues are reading.

A Writer or Owner gets the draft by default — the draft as the server has it, including edits nobody has approved. That is usually what you want while you are working on it.

The file is built from the server's copy, so an edit still on its way from somebody's keyboard may not be in it. In practice that window is a second or two. If it matters that one specific change is included, make sure the document has stopped showing Reconnecting… before you download.

A draft copy says that it is one

A draft download is marked as an uncontrolled copy, in three places, on purpose:

• the filename ends in - DRAFT
• the file opens with UNCONTROLLED COPY — DRAFT, NOT APPROVED, above everything else
• the document control section reads Draft — not approved for use, and names the approved version in force instead of presenting a version number for the draft

This matters because a copy that leaves Alchex loses its context. Someone who receives a Word file cannot tell from the outside whether it was approved, and the document control section carries the real reference code, owner and approval record — so a draft carrying that section, unmarked, reads as an approved document. It is not, and now it does not claim to be.

If you want the approved copy while holding Writer or Owner, set Version to Approved version before pressing Download. (You can still reach it from a published entry in Version history — that route is unchanged.)

The generated document control section

Every Word export starts with a Document control section that Alchex builds for you, ahead of the body. It is assembled from the real record rather than typed by hand, and carries the document's identity — name, reference code, type, owner, status — followed by its version history and the approvals behind those versions.

The status line describes the bytes in the file you are holding, not the document in general. A published copy is stamped Current with its version — Current v7 — and the section lists the Current version alongside the rest of the identity. A draft copy is never stamped Current: it reads Draft — not approved for use and names the approved version in force instead, so the file cannot be mistaken for the one people are meant to follow.

That is the part an assessor usually asks for and the part a hand-maintained table usually gets wrong. If your document body still contains a hand-typed version-history table from an earlier life, the two can sit side by side for a while; the generated one is the one that stays current on its own.

If the generated section cannot be built for some reason, the export still succeeds — you get the document without it, rather than an error.

What is deliberately left out

The exported file carries no author or machine metadata. The Word fields that normally record who created a file, who last saved it and which account was involved are blanked, so no internal identifier travels out with a document you send to a customer or an auditor.

There is no PDF export of an authored document. Export to Word and print or convert from there.

Exports are recorded. Exported the document appears in the document's activity log alongside edits, approvals and publishes.

Exporting the activity log

Choose Activity log (CSV) in the document's Download window — or take it together with the document itself, as the zip.

The Activity panel used to carry its own Export CSV button in its header. It no longer does: taking a copy of a record is one act, with one door, on every record kind. The file is identical to the one that button produced.

This gives you the document's complete history, not the page you can see on screen. The on-screen feed stops at the most recent entries for readability; the export does not stop at all.

Each row carries:

• timestamp — when it happened
• event_type — the kind of event
• actor_id and actor_name — who did it
• version — the version in force at the time, where one applies
• summary — the human-readable line, the same wording you see in the panel

Because summary is the panel's own wording, it names the act as specifically as the panel does: a replaced file exports as Replaced the file with its edition in the version column, and a review that changed nothing exports as Reviewed the document, no change needed — neither collapses into a generic edit.

Anyone who can see the activity feed can export it; there is no extra role requirement beyond access to the document itself.

One safety detail you will notice if you look closely: values that would otherwise start with =, +, - or @ are prefixed with an apostrophe. Spreadsheets treat those characters as the start of a formula, and a document title or comment should never execute when someone opens the file. The apostrophe is what stops that.

The CSV holds the recorded events — comments, approvals, publishes, renames. It does not enumerate the individual editing sessions the history panel shows; those are read in the panel itself, where each one can also be returned to. See Version history.

Choosing between them

• Someone needs to read the document → download the Word copy or the original file.
• Someone needs to prove how the document got here → export the activity CSV, and point at the document control section of the Word copy for the version and approval record.

Both are in the same Download window, so the choice is made in one place rather than in two different corners of the screen — and if the answer is "both", that is the zip.

Related

• Version history — pick a specific version before exporting.
• Activity and archive — reading the log on screen.
• Publishing — making the draft you just exported the official one.
• Registers — the same Download, on the other record kind.