Which Format Should You Choose?
Folge exports the same guide fifteen ways. Here is which one to pick, and why you would not pick the others.
One Question First
What does the person on the other end do with it? Read it once, edit it, present it, or click through it as training. That answers the format.
| If they will | Export |
|---|---|
| Read it and file it | |
| Rewrite parts of it | Word |
| Present it to a room | PowerPoint |
| Take it as training you can track | SCORM |
| Read it in a browser, from a link | Folge Cloud |
| Paste it into a wiki or help desk | Rich HTML |
| Glance at it in a chat message | Animated GIF |
| Feed it to something else | Markdown |
Every format below links to a real sample on export examples, so you can see the output before you commit to it.
Documents
- PDF: The safe default. Looks identical on every machine and opens without extra software. See a sample, or read how to export one.
- Word: A .docx with the same steps and screenshots, editable. Pick it when someone else has to put your guide into their own template, or when the text will keep changing without you. See a sample.
- PowerPoint: One step per slide, with speaker notes. For walking a room through a process rather than handing it over. See a sample.
- Animated GIF: Your steps as a short loop that plays inline in Slack, Teams and most wikis. Nobody can read it at their own pace, so keep it under about six steps. See a sample.
- SCORM: A package your LMS treats as a course, so completion is recorded against the person who took it. Pick this when someone has to prove the training was completed. See a sample.
Web and Code
- Folge Cloud: Publishes the guide online and gives you a link. Update the guide, publish again, and the link shows the new version, so nobody is reading a PDF from March. See a sample.
- Rich HTML: One self-contained HTML file, images and all, that works from a shared drive with no server. Pick it when the guide must not leave your network. See a sample.
- Simple HTML: Just the markup for the guide, no page around it. This is the one to paste into a blog post, a knowledge base article or an email. See a sample.
- Markdown: For GitHub, GitLab, Obsidian and Azure DevOps wikis. Images come out as a folder beside the file, or embedded in the document if you turn that on. See a sample.
- JSON: The guide as structured data plus an images folder, for when you are building something of your own with it. See a sample.
Straight Into the Tool You Already Use
If your team reads documentation somewhere specific, send it there directly instead of exporting a file and uploading it: Confluence, Notion, WordPress, Hudu and Espresso Tutorials each create a page from your guide. All the integrations.
The guide then sits where people already look, instead of in a folder somebody has to be told about. The integrations are listed here.
Exporting More Than Once
Export the same guide as many times as you like, in as many formats as you like. Sending it to Confluence does not stop you also handing someone a PDF.
What this is good for
- Send a guide to someone who will not install anything.
- Put a guide inside a wiki, an LMS or a help desk that already exists.
- Hand the text to someone who has to edit it after you.
Make guides like this one
Folge captures a screenshot on every click, so a guide writes itself as you work.
