Overview
You can export any Nylon answer to PDF or Word so it can be saved to a matter, emailed, or filed. With a custom Firm Template, those exports come out looking like your firm's own documents — your logo, fonts, colours, headers and footers, and the answer styled to match your house style.
There are two parts to this. Anyone on your account can export a response (covered first). Setting up the branded template is an Admin/Owner task that you do once per organisation (covered in the second half). If you only need to share a single conversation with a colleague, you can also do that without exporting — see Sharing matters with your team.
Exporting a response
You can export straight from any answer in the chat.
Open the answer you want, then click the ⋯ (More options) menu at the top right of the answer.
Hover Export Response.
Choose Download as PDF or Download as DOCX.
The file downloads using your firm's branded template, with the answer dropped in and every placeholder filled out. If your organisation hasn't uploaded a template yet, exports use Nylon's standard styling.
Tip: The same menu also has Export Conversation, which exports the whole question-and-answer thread rather than the single response. Only Export Response uses your Firm Template.
Setting up your Firm Template
This section is for Admins and Owners only.
A Firm Template is a single branded Word (.docx) file — one per organisation — that Nylon uses to style every export. To set or replace it:
Go to Account → Organisation Settings.
Scroll to Customisation.
Under Firm Template, click Manage.
Upload your .docx file. You can replace it at any time, and the new template applies to all future exports.
Templates enable certain placeholders to be inserted using "merge tags" so that the export automatically includes certain values.
You don't have to start from a blank page. Nylon provides an example template — including the default one the platform ships with — so you can download a working .docx, open it in Word, swap in your branding, and you're most of the way there.
Checking which placeholders matched: After uploading, the Manage dialog shows a View matched merge tags panel. Expand it to see each placeholder Nylon supports and whether your template uses it — a quick way to confirm nothing important was mistyped before you rely on the template.
Building your template in Word
This section is for Admins and Owners only.
Open an example template in Microsoft Word and adjust the pieces below to match your firm.
The one rule you can't skip
Your template must contain {{response}} somewhere in the body. That's the spot where the AI answer is inserted. No {{response}} means no answer in the export. The example template already includes it, if you're using that.
Placeholders — pull in real content
A placeholder is text in double curly braces, for example {{firm_name}}. Type it anywhere — body, header or footer — and Nylon swaps it for the real value on export.
{{response}} — the AI answer, with its headings, lists and tables (required).
{{question}} — the question that was asked, can be used as a Subject line.
{{date}} — the export date.
{{author}} — the name of the person exporting.
{{firm_name}} — your organisation's name.
{{matter_reference}} — the engagement/matter name (blank if none is assigned).
{{practice_area}} — the practice area of the question.
{{page_number}} — the current page number (handy in footers), can be stylised.
Three rules for placeholders:
Lowercase only — {{firm_name}} works, {{Firm_Name}} comes out blank.
Double braces — {{date}} works, a single brace does not.
Avoid stranded labels — a placeholder with no value becomes blank, so don't leave a label like "Matter: " with nothing after it.
You can style merge tags directly in Word — bold, italic, font and colour all carry over to the export. The one exception is {{response}}, which uses its own formatting from the answer (and from your style configuration block, below).
Logo and branding
Put your logo in the Word header: Insert → Header → Edit Header, then paste in your logo image.
Align the logo with paragraph alignment, not tabs. To push the logo to the right, click into the header line and use Word's Align Right button — do not use the Tab key or a manual tab stop. A tab-positioned logo can spill past the margin and get clipped at the page edge in the PDF. Right-align is safe in both Word and PDF.
Headers, footers and page numbers
Anything you put in the header or footer repeats on every page. Use {{page_number}} for live page numbers, for example a footer reading: {{firm_name}} — Page {{page_number}}
Only the current page number is supported — there's no "Page X of Y" total yet.
A different look on page 1
Want a full letterhead on page 1 and a slim running header on the rest? Word handles this natively.
Click into the body, then go to Insert → Header → Edit Header.
In the Header & Footer Design tab, tick Different First Page.
Fill in the First Page Header/Footer (page 1) and the regular Header/Footer (pages 2 onwards).
Close the header and footer.
It adapts automatically: a short answer shows just the first-page look, while a longer one picks up the running header from page 2. Word only lets you edit the "pages 2+" header when the document has more than one page, so it's fine to add a second, empty page just to set this up — Nylon detects an empty trailing page and removes it from the export.
Styling the answer text
By default the answer renders in Nylon's standard styling. To make the answer's headings and body match your brand — fonts, sizes, colours and heading numbering — add a style configuration block to the template body, before {{response}}. The example templates already include this block:
<<NYLON STYLE CONFIG>>
# Format each label line below with your firm's fonts, sizes and colours
# using Word's Home ribbon (font, size, bold, colour).
<Heading 1>
<Heading 2>
<Heading 3>
<Body>
#
# Heading numbering — set to: none | flat | hierarchical
<Heading Numbering: none>
<<STYLE CONFIG END>>
To use it:
Format each label line in Word. Select a line like <Heading 1> and apply the look you want from the Home ribbon. For example, format <Heading 1> as Arial 16pt bold navy and your top-level answer headings will come out Arial 16 bold navy; format <Body> as Georgia 11pt and every answer paragraph becomes Georgia 11.
Set heading numbering on the <Heading Numbering: …> line — none for no numbers (default), flat for 1. 2. 3., or hierarchical for 1, 1.1, 1.1.1 (sub-numbers reset under each parent).
Good to know: Nylon removes the whole config block from the final document, so your readers never see it. If you skip a label line (or the whole block), that part just uses Nylon's default styling. Lines starting with # are comments and are ignored. The sentinels <<NYLON STYLE CONFIG>> and <<STYLE CONFIG END>> must stay as plain, unformatted text.
Before you upload — a quick checklist
{{response}} is in the body where the answer should go.
Placeholders are lowercase and in double braces.
The logo is right-aligned, not tab-positioned.
The style config block sits before {{response}}, with each label line formatted.
You've exported a test answer to both PDF and DOCX and eyeballed the result.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Who can upload or change the Firm Template?
A: Admins and Owners, from Organisation Settings → Customisation → Firm Template. Everyone on the account can then export using it.
Q: Can we have more than one template?
A: Not in this release — there's one Firm Template per organisation. You can replace it at any time, and the new version applies to all future exports.
Q: What happens if we haven't uploaded a template?
A: Exports still work — they just use Nylon's standard styling until you upload your own.
Q: Does the template apply to both PDF and Word exports?
A: Yes. The same .docx template is used whether someone downloads as PDF or DOCX, and for both Export Response and Export Conversation.
Q: A placeholder came out blank. Why?
A: Either there was no value for it (for example the engagement name when no engagement is assigned), or the tag was mistyped. Check it's lowercase and in double braces, and use the View matched merge tags panel in the Manage dialog to confirm it was recognised.
Troubleshooting
The exported document has no answer in it
Your template is missing the {{response}} placeholder, or it was deleted. Open the template in Word, add {{response}} to the body where the answer should appear, and re-upload.
The logo is cut off at the edge of the PDF
The logo is likely tab-positioned. Open the header in Word, remove the tab, and use the Align Right button instead. Re-upload and export a test PDF to confirm.
The style config text is showing in the exported document
The sentinel lines may have been formatted or altered. Make sure <<NYLON STYLE CONFIG>> and <<STYLE CONFIG END>> are present, spelled exactly, and left as plain unformatted text so Nylon can detect and remove the block.
Still stuck?
Get in touch via the chat widget in-app and we'll help.
Last updated: June 2026