Share a Quarto or R Markdown report as a link
Render the report to one self-contained HTML file, upload it, and send a link. Readers need no R, no Quarto and no account, and interactive charts keep working.
Quarto and R Markdown both render to HTML, and an HTML report is a web page. Emailed as an attachment it often opens as a download or as source code; committed to GitHub it shows as code. Hosted, it opens from a link in any browser, on a laptop or a phone.
Step 1: render to one self-contained file
- ✓Quarto: by default quarto render report.qmd writes report.html plus a report_files folder with the scripts and images. Add embed-resources: true under format: html in the YAML header and everything goes into report.html instead.
- ✓R Markdown: html_document is self-contained by default (self_contained: true), so clicking Knit or running rmarkdown::render("report.Rmd") gives one report.html. If someone set self_contained: false, set it back.
- ✓Hide the code for a non-technical reader: echo: false in Quarto, or knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = FALSE) in R Markdown. Quarto also has code-fold: true, which collapses code behind a toggle.
Step 2: check it opens on its own
Copy report.html into an empty folder and open it from there. If a chart, image or table is missing, the file still points at something on your disk; re-render with the self-contained setting above. Making an HTML file self-contained covers the remaining cases.
Step 3: upload it and send the link
Drag report.html onto the FileShare Pro dashboard and copy the link. The page is served as a web page, so htmlwidgets such as plotly, leaflet and DT keep their hover, zoom and sorting. Self-contained reports with embedded widgets get large; the free plan accepts files up to 100 MB.
The reader needs no account, no R and no Quarto. Shared pages carry a noindex tag, so search engines do not list the report, and Pro adds a password for sensitive data: password-protecting an HTML page.
Re-render, keep the link
When the data changes, render again and upload the new report.html over the old file. The link stays the same, so a monthly report can live at one URL, and the earlier version stays in version history. Updating a shared link without changing it has the details. For Python notebooks, see sharing a Jupyter notebook as a link.
Collect questions on the report itself
Turn on comments and readers can pin a note to the exact chart or paragraph they mean after typing a name. Questions stay next to the figure instead of in an email thread.
Frequently asked
Render it with embed-resources: true so everything is in one HTML file, upload that file to a host that serves it as a web page, and send the link. It opens in any browser.
Without embed-resources: true, Quarto puts scripts and images in a separate report_files folder. Uploading only report.html leaves them behind. Re-render with embed-resources: true.
Yes. They run in the browser, so hover, zoom and pan work once the self-contained file is hosted.
Yes. Upload the new render over the old file. The link stays the same.
Yes. The free plan hosts up to 50 files with comments included. Password-protected links are on Pro.
Drop the file, copy the link — live in seconds, free plan included.
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