If you want to share a Connect topic, a reply, or a profile on social media, or in a chat or email, this tutorial is for you.
This guide is part of the Transition Tutorials.
Summary
On old Connect you needed to first create a so-called ‘permalink’ before you could share a specific reply. With the redesign, this is now a lot easier. Learn to find and copy direct links to specific Connect content below.
How to share a topic
There is a icon for this.
You can find the share icon under topics and replies, as shown below.
When you tap the share icon, you will see something like this:
The different options for sharing a topic are explained in the following.
Link
At the top, you can use the Copy icon (marked with a red arrow) to copy the text link onto your clipboard.
With the link copied to your clipboard, you can now paste it wherever you need it. Notice the “?u=username” at the end of the text link. In my experience, this part can be deleted without any problems.
Send to device
This is useful if you are logged in on more devices. A list of your devices will be shown, and you can select one. The next screenshot shows how a Connect link showed up on my computer after sharing it from my phone.
Share via QR code
Selecting this option will display a QR-code like the one shown below.
You can print it, show it to a friend, take a screenshot, or download it for sharing how you see fit.
Sharing with friends
Next is 5 miniature icons of your friends. They are the ones you most recently communicated with. Tap one of them to share the link.
Sharing in other apps
At the bottom, 5 communication apps etc. are shown. Select one of them to start a new message to share the Connect link.
Sharing a specific reply
You can also share links to individual replies so your readers don’t have to scroll down to find the reply you want them to see. The method is basically the same as for topics. Just find the reply and tap the share icon below.
You may have noticed the new oval navigation bar shown in the next screenshot.
The above screenshot is from a topic with currently 65 replies, and the one shown on the screen is the last one = number 65 out of 65 replies. The oval bar is continuously updated as you scroll up and down.
After tapping the share icon under a reply you will see something like this:
The reply number is specified at the end of the URL. In the above example, the link is to reply number 68 (marked in yellow).
TIP: If you wonder why there can be a reply number 68 in a topic with only 65 replies here is an explanation: Sometimes, replies get taken down by moderators or flagged by other users. When this happens the other replies keep their numbers. So you can calculate that 3 replies were removed from this topic.
While scrolling down over replies, the URL is also constantly being updated with the current reply number. This allows you to just copy the URL from the address bar if you find this easier. On desktop computers, this will often be faster than using the share button.
Share a profile
Lastly, sharing Connect and Maps profile links will be explained.
How to share a Connect profile
When you tap on a profile photo, the profile summary will pop up. This is not the profile page.
Tap the bigger profile picture on the profile summary to get to the actual profile page as shown below.
Someone forgot to add the share icon on Connect profile pages. So here is the workaround to see and copy the URL:
Swipe down from the top to show the current URL in your browser. Then tap the URL to see this:
Now, use the share icon to reach the usual share options, or tap the copy icon. Both are highlighted in the screenshot above.
For good measure, the steps to share a Maps profile are also included in this tutorial.
How to share a Maps profile
Open the Maps profile page and tap the share icon shown in the screenshot below.
This only works on mobile devices. On computers you will need to copy the URL manually from the address bar.
Such links can be long like:
https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/116647701492246965139/contribute/@55.6960605,12.5907535,935m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=da&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTEwNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
All the junk after the number is not needed. So sharing only this
https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/116647701492246965139/ works well.
The Transition Tutorial Share your Maps contributions in this community explains how to publicly display your Maps profile link on your Connect profile page.
This is the end of this tutorial.
Credit: The oil painting shown at the top is Beach at Trouville by Eugène Boudin. Painted in 1864/5. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.
), opens your mail program and you can send the quoted text and including the link to it in an email:
