How guest access works

Learn how to invite guests to collaborate on content in your Whimsical workspace. Perfect for clients, or others not in your workspace.

What is a guest?

A guest is someone you invite to specific files or folders in your workspace. You control whether they can view, comment on, or edit the content you share with them.

Adding guests is free of charge.

All workspaces (free or paid) can invite up to 10 guests per file or folder. Plus, if you have over 10 editors in your paid workspace, the guest limit increases with your paid seats. For example: If you have 20 editors, you can invite 20 guests per file or folder.

Inviting new guests to a file

To invite a new guest to a file, open the access menu in the top right hand corner, and enter their email address:

The default permissions level is “editor” which means they can modify anything on the file, including deleting it.

For more limited access, you can choose “commenter” or “viewer” instead:

Then click “Invite”. At this point you can add additional guests, or a custom message that will appear in the invite email.

Inviting new guests to a folder

To invite a new guest to a folder, open the share menu in the top right hand corner, and follow the same steps as above:

Guests invited to a folder will have access to all files in that folder, at the level you define (comment, view, or edit)

Inviting existing guests or workspace members to files or folders

If a guest already exists in your workspace, or you need to invite a workspace member to a private file, you can search for them by name (or email address) in the invite field:

What do guests see?

Your guest will receive an invite from hello@whimsical.com with your name, the file or folder name, and any message you included in the invite. From here they can sign up or log in to a free Whimsical account.

If they send a reply to the invite email, it will go to you at your email address associated with the workspace.

Once they’ve signed in, they'll see the name of your workspace and the files where they have been invited as a guest. They will not see any other content from your workspace.

What can a guest do?

Guests invited to a single file will only have access to that specific file.

Guests invited to a folder can:

• access all files in that folder.
• print, export, or copy files from that folder.
• share links to the files from that folder - these links will respect the access settings you have defined.
• add and delete files (if they have been added as an editor).

Guests invited to a file or folder cannot:

• access file or folder permissions.
• change default permissions.
• add/remove other guests.

For files within a folder, you'll see that the guest permissions are inherited from the parent folder:

Guests can choose to leave files, folders or workspaces they've been invited to. Read how in this article.

Managing existing guests in a file or folder

You can see the number of guests in a file or folder in the top menu next to your avatar, and a list of all guests and their permissions in the access menu:

From here you can adjust their level of access. Choose from:

• can view
• can comment
• can edit

Or, remove them completely.

Managing all workspace guests

To see all guests in your workspace, go to Manage guests, which you’ll find in the menu under your workspace name in the top left corner.

From here you’ll see a list of all guests, and the files/folders they’ve been added to.

You can easily promote them to a workspace viewer, or editor. Or, remove them from the workspace:

Note: You will be billed a pro-rated amount for each guest you promote to editor.

Can Guests Leave a Workspace?

Yes. If you want to leave a workspace you've been invited to as a guest, click "Leave [Workspace name]" from the menu in the top left corner under the workspace name:

Alternatively, go to "Account Settings", which you'll find under your avatar in the top right:

Then, click "Leave" next to the name of the workspace you'd like to leave:

You can also leave an individual file or folder. Just right click it and select "Leave File/Folder" in the menu on the left: