[Share]-How to share all artboards in XD with no interaction?

[Saikeerthan]

when i try to share the project, 2 screens are not sharing ..

<The Title was renamed by moderator>

[HARSHIKA_VERMA]

Thank you for sharing the solution that worked for you. Please feel free to reach out to us in the future for any query related to Adobe XD. We would be happy to help.

Thanks,

Harshika

[mattyB]

I work for a tech company, Ex Sketch user converted to Xd.
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Yes sharing prototypes between dev's and designers is great for the dev hand off.
However now and again I use the share link to show non designers separate pages. I now HAVE to PNG them and send them over. BUT: If prototype is in the document I now no longer can quickly share - my question is why change this? Need help with your Ux hit me up.

Also I have a big project with multipul screen sizes in and because some of the work is prototyped I cant share all artbords for viewing because I have to set the home artboard....what? makes no sense. It makes sense if your only sharing a prototype but why take away a good option of just simply being able to view. Some people don't have time to go through the steps of the design they just want to see the Ui.

Thanks Matt
(here all week)

[wishah410]

I can't believe nobody has replied to this.. I am having the same problem. Such a silly problem this is. There is no way to select the greyed out Artboards. Somebody please help

[mattyB]

For now - Copy over all the artboards into a new file. Share for review or dev and all should be okay.
Just annoying that we have to create a new project.

[mattolpinski]

Alright I'll give that a try. Thanks!

Matt Olpinski
Web & Mobile Design Consultant
President / Matthew's Design Co.

http://mattolpinski.com

matt.olpinski@gmail.com

[dcaryll1]

If you have prototyping set on any of your artboards (clicking an item links to another artboard for example) than any artboards without prototyping will not be included in the share link. You could override this by just adding a link from one artboard to the artboard you're seeing grayed out. When we create a prototype, we sometimes create a new "navigation" artboard for moving between artboards in the prototype. 

[mattyB]

Yeah, agreed that is one way. Little time consuming so I just copied the whole project over and renamed 'Xd Link - xxx'.
Really need to bring back the ability to just share all as a link for clients to glide through. 
I work with a design system and do not need fancy animations all the time to create new pages unless we are bringing in a new element or I feel the design needs to be animated for maximum cleanness.
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Prototypes are very important but sometimes unneeded. Or only some very small parts of the Ui it is needed for.
Sometimes the client simply wants to view pages + some separate Ui patterns like Swipe cards, gallery Uis & payment flows.
Since the update I now have to create separate files for prototypes and screens unless I want to spend hours interacting the designs to be 'web perfect'.

Thanks!

[mattolpinski]

I'm having the same problem. This is absolutely stupid functionality. Why can't I simply get a share link that includes all my artboards? I want to be able to send a link to my client that lets them tab through the artboards. I don't want to have to prototype or psuedo-prototype every one of my 80 artboards just to share it with them. Why wouldn't you give us an option to share all artboards, Adobe? I can't believe I'm even having to type this. Please give us this functionality asap. It's extremely important.

[mattyB]

Yeah, I work with a design system so animations are not always needed for a new page design ha so this sucks. 
*See my reply comment above for a quick-ish work around for now but just stupid.

[mattolpinski]

I can't wrap my head around why prototyping interactions is a mandatory prerequisite for EACH SCREEN you want to share with someone. It's just nonsense. Adobe, please let us share a link that simply lets others flip through the artboards.

[Arun Kaza]

The way it works today is:
Case 1 - If you have a Home artboard set/defined in canvas, then only the artbaords that are linked/wired to that home artboard is published in the link.
Case 2 - If you do not have any Home artboard set, then all artboards present in your document will get published in the link. Sequence would be left to right and top to bottom. 

This behavior is not new and has not changed in recent release as well. Since it was not always obvious (as there was no visual feedback) for you to identify which screens are going to be published when you create a link - we added that capability in Share mode where-in now you can see the screens getting published (based on existing scases) highlighted. All other screens get greyed out to give you that feedback.

Now coming to the specific use case that has been highlighted in this thread (ability to publish all artboards irrespective of whether they are wired or not) - I can totally understand why that is an important scenario and I agree to it. While I cannot comment on the exact timeframe by when it would be added, but note that we are actively looking into enabling this use case.

Thanks!

[mattyB]

Yeah, I dont know why I mentioned homeartboard I think I might have been typing my thoughts.
Yeah, we need the function to be a thing.

[Alexandra_2323]

Hi ArunKaza,

I was able to publish all the artboards in my file up until today, however, now everything is disabled that's not linked in prototype mode. Regarding your comment "If you do not have any Home artboard set",  how do I do this? I can't find any option to remove the Home marking from the artboard. Even if I delete the Home artboard it just marks the next one as Home. The only solution I found is copying everything into a new file...

[Arun Kaza]

Hi,
Looks like you have a home artboard set and you also have connections to the other artboard. That is the reason, if you delete the home artboard, then the other connected artboard gets automatically set as home. If you do not have any wire connections, then deleting the home artboard will not set another home. Can you try this out and let me know if this is not working for you?

If you wanted all artboards present on your canvas to be published, then you should not have any home artboard set. Another workaround is for you to copy the home artboard and content, delete it and then paste it back. 

Thanks!
Arun

[Alexandra_2323]

Hi Arun,

Yes, I have a home artboard set but no links to any other ones. I don't want any home artboard as my file is not meant to be a prototype, but it's not letting me not have one. I have been trying what you suggested but if I delete the home artboard the artboard next to it will get selected automatically. 

I attached images below where you can see I have no links anywhere yet I'm forced to have a home artboard.

[Arun Kaza]

Thank you for sharing these screenshots. It is indeed strange that without wires, a home artboard is still getting set automatically. Is it possible for you to share your XD document privately with me? If yes, then click on my profile photo and send me a private message along with file. I will get someone to investigate and see why the home artboard is not getting unset. 

Thank you for all your patience and support!

[ZachFrazier1]

I found that if you have a screen set as the home screen in prototype mode that all screens that occur in the prototype progression previous to the home screen will be greyed out. So basically if you have a prototype with 10 progressive screens (they go in order 1-10) and #4 is your home screen, then 1-3 will be greyed out and won't appear when you share. When I made my "#1" equivalent in my prototype my "home" screen it solved the problem for me. To change the home screen, you just go to "prototype" and click the grey box just on the outside of the top left of artboard you want to be the home screen. It should turn blue and should be your new home screen. 

I'm sure this doesn't solve the problem if the screen you have set as the home screen needs to remain set as the home screen, however, because of the nature of my project, this could be changed and helped me. 

Hopefully this is helpful.

[jordanm71837611]

For as good as the XD team has been with updating the app and making it remarkably good, this bug/issue is relatively infuriating. We shouldnt be forced into goofy workarounds to make one of the principle requirements (sharing) a working feature.

[mattolpinski]

Here's how I would expect the share functionality to work (in case anyone at Adobe is taking this seriously and because the current behavior is absolutely senseless):

You click the share tab. You get to create a link and select ANY artboards you want to share with that link regardless of what's going on in the prototype tab (it can select the prototyped ones by default if there are any and select ALL of the artboards by default if there are no prototyped artboards). There should be a "select/deselect all" button because sometimes people design a lot of screens. Then you can OPTIONALLY pick a home artboard to share with THAT specific link and you can simply click it again to remove the home artboard (it can default to the first one in the series if left unset).

Then, I simply click "update link" and it updates the currently selected link (because my first step was selecting or creating a link). At any point I can rename links and use the nice little checkboxes to control what UI is being shown when someone visits the link.

So basically I'd recommend making the LINK higher up in the hierarchy and let the user make some much more intuitive decisions for that specific link when it comes to which artboards to share.

I should not be required to prototype 50+ artboards just to share them with a client. It's absolutely maddening and makes me want to switch to Figma so please fix this terrible functionality as soon as possible!

[mattolpinski]

Here's how I would expect the share functionality to work:

You click the share tab. You get to create a link and select ANY artboards you want to share with that link regardless of what's going on in the prototype tab (it can select the prototyped ones by default if there are any and select all of the artboards by default if there are no prototyped artboards). There should be a "select all" button because sometimes people design a lot of screens. Then you can OPTIONALLY pick a home artboard to share with THAT specific link and you can simply click it again to remove the home artboard (it can default to the first one in the series if left unset).

Then, I simply click "update link" and it updates the link (because my first step was creating or selecting a link). At any point I can rename links and use the checkboxes to control what UI is being shown when someone visits the link.

So basically I'd recommend making the LINK higher up in the hierarchy and let the user make some much more intuitive decisions for that specific link when it comes to which artboards to share.

[mattyB]

Yeah, agree with this. 
An Adobe team member tried marking his own comment as correct a few weeks back, so I have a feeling the focus is elsewhere right now. haha

[Arun Kaza · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I see your point here about being able to publish all artboards. Given that there is a home artboard already set on canvas, and there is no direct way of removing it, you are unable to publish all screens. We understand that this can be annoying.  

Please note that we are going to provide the ability to set and unset of a Home artboard in Prototype mode soon. Apart from that, we are also thinking about providing a way to publish all artboards from Share mode, irrespective of whether you have wired a flow or not.

To your point about selecting artboards in Share mode and not respecting any wires set in Prototype mode, would that not be confusing? Why would you define home, wire screens like a flow in Prototype and not want any of that to carry over into Share mode?

[mariellel78807418]

It's absolutely crazy that there is no option do unselect a Home screen in the prototype. We haven't even touched the prototype and suddenly it seems a Home screen was selected for us, and now we are unable to share all of the screens at once. Is the only way to work around this is to copy and paste everything into a new document ? We have all of our fonts, colors and components set up in our file for the developers and now we will have to recreate ALL of these in a new document. There needs to be an easier way to share screens without interactions. We have no wires set up in the prototype and yet we still can not share. 

It's devastating that there is no solution for this, we've been searching for hours now to come up with no way to continue sharing all screens at once. 

[mattolpinski]

The ability to set/unset a home artboard and publish all artboards regardless of what is wired up in prototype mode would be welcomed updates.

Selecting artboards in Share mode and respecting the wires in Prototype mode are not mutually exclusive. It'd be awesome if the default selected artboards in Share mode were the ones with wired prototype interactions. It'd also be nice if "all artboards" was the default when no screens have been wired/prototyped.

But when you get into Share mode, why not let the user override any of the selections and simply select/deselect the artboards they want to share for that specific link? That would be amazing functionality and really make XD much more usable.

[Peter Villevoye]

From the new January 2020 update new features page:

"Now, you can share individual artboards from Prototype mode without any wired interactions with your collaborators."

https://helpx.adobe.com/nl/xd/help/whats-new/2020.html

So you don't need to or hook up pages to some interaction anymore, just to get it shared for review.

You still might need to switch or set the Homepage label.