Help centre / Desk / Documents and letters
Write a document
You can write letters and other documents for a matter right in Desk, on your letterhead. Everyone working on the matter can edit the draft at the same time, and once it’s finished it goes on the matter as a PDF.
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Start a document
On the matter, press Write a document. You can also press New document under Documents and choose the matter there.
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Choose where to start and give it a title
Pick a template in Start from, or leave it on Blank page. Give it a Title, like “Letter to the buyer’s solicitors”, and press Start writing.
If you start from a template you can leave the title empty, and the document takes the template’s name.
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Write
The toolbar above the page has what you’d expect from a word processor: styles, fonts and sizes, bold and italic, colour, alignment, lists, tables, pictures and page breaks. Your work saves as you type, and the line by the title says Saved. once it has.
If your connection drops, keep going. Your changes go up as soon as you’re back online.
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Pick the letterhead
Choose one from the Letterhead list above the page. The page shows it straight away, just as it will print.
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Check it
Press Preview to open the PDF in a new tab, exactly as it will be sent or printed.
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Finish it
Press Finish. If the document came from a template with fields to fill in, fill them in, then press Finish again.
The finished PDF goes on the matter’s Documents tab, and into Folio too if your organisation files finished documents there.
Working on it together
Anyone with a seat can open the draft while you’re in it. You’ll see their name above the page and their cursor in a colour of its own, and every change shows for everyone as it’s made.
Finding your documents
Documents has four views: Recently edited, Drafts, Finished and Templates. Search by title or by the words inside.
To change a finished document, open it and press Make changes. That starts a draft of the next version, and the version you finished stays on the matter as it was.
If something goes wrong
The document says it’s offline or can’t be reached. Your changes are kept on the page while it reconnects. Keep the tab open until it says Saved. again, and reload it if it doesn’t within a minute.
Finish stays greyed out. A field still needs filling in, or a change hasn’t saved yet. Fill in every field and wait for Saved., then try again.
You want to start again. Press Throw draft away above the page. A finished version is never thrown away with it.
Still stuck? Write to [email protected] and we'll get back to you.