Exporting documents
Download an authored document as a Word copy or Markdown, or a file-backed document as its original file — all from the one Download every record carries.
Which text is exported. Download gives you the document as you see it on screen — the same text your readers and your processes read. It is the one download a document has. Work does not stay inside Alchex. An auditor asks for a copy, a supplier needs the procedure as an attachment, someone wants a register in a spreadsheet. Every copy you take comes from the same place.
One Download, on every record
Download sits in the ⋯ menu of every record — a document, a register — and it opens a short list of file types. Click the one you want and the file arrives. There is nothing to confirm and nothing to set.
Which types are on the list depends on the record. A document offers itself as Word or Markdown; a register offers the view you are looking at as CSV, Excel or PDF. Where a record has only one answer — a file-backed document — Download simply downloads it, with no list at all.
You never have to remember where a particular kind keeps its exports, because they all keep them in one 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 on this list.
Downloading a document
Open the document, choose Download from the ⋯ menu, and click a file type. What is on the list depends on what kind of document it is:
| Document | File type | You get |
|---|---|---|
| Authored in Alchex | Word (.docx) | A .docx file that matches the editor: the header, the body and the footer, in the same fonts and heading styles |
| Authored in Alchex | Markdown (.md) | The same text as plain Markdown, for taking it into another tool |
| External | The original file | The original uploaded file, unchanged |
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
Download gives you the document as it reads now. There is no version to choose — that question was the slowest part of taking a copy, and it has an answer that depends on who you are rather than on what you pick.
A Reader always gets the version in force. 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. Nothing is refused: a reader can always take away the document their colleagues are reading.
A Writer or Owner gets the current text — as the server has it, including edits nobody has approved. That is what is on their screen, so that is what downloads.
It is the only download. Version history does not offer a second copy of a version: what you take away is what you are looking at.
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.
The Word file is what the editor shows
The Word copy holds the document's header, body and footer exactly as the editor shows them, and nothing else: no banner, no notice and no generated tables are added. It is named exactly as the document is — Incident Procedure.docx — whether or not it carries changes nobody has approved yet.
Headings keep Word's own Heading styles, so Word's navigation pane and table of contents work, but they use the editor's font, size and colour rather than Word's default blue. Bulleted lists use the same bullets as the editor.
The approval record lives in Alchex. When someone needs to know which version was approved and by whom, walk them through Version history.
If you hold Writer or Owner and you want the approved text rather than your changes, download it where it is what you see: from a Reader's view, or once the changes are published.
What is deliberately left out
The file is laid out on the workspace's page (Settings → General): its page size, and the header and footer printed on every page, with the page number and page count as Word fields that stay right when the file is edited. A document with its own header and footer prints those instead, aligned as on the page, and Different first page carries over as Word's own setting of that name.
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.
The Markdown copy is the document's text, not a controlled copy. A working copy opens with a line saying it is an uncontrolled copy, and its filename ends in - UNAPPROVED.
Exports are recorded. Exported the document appears in the document's activity log alongside edits, approvals and publishes.
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 → walk them through Version history on screen, where every version carries the approval behind it.
Related
- Version history — every version, with the approval behind it.
- Activity and archive — reading the log on screen.
- Publishing — making the changes you just exported the official version.
- Registers — the same Download, on the other record kind.