Share a notebook with the right sources and audience
A guest asks for the event notebook so they can ask it about parking. The notebook also holds the internal costing note, and sharing it shares that too.
What you'll make
a sharing decision for one notebook, with every source checked for the audience and the recipient’s view confirmed, or a reviewed summary to send instead.
What you'll need
NotebookLM (Google’s help now calls it Gemini Notebook) with a notebook you own, the right to share its contents with the intended people, and about ten minutes. Your organisation’s settings may limit the options; don’t change them for this.
Example result.
Audience: external event guests (arrival and schedule questions)
New notebook "Guest guide": Public event schedule, Visitor FAQ
Left out: Internal costing note (stays in the original, unshared)
Shared with: guest list, Viewer
Recipient check: one guest confirms the Sources panel shows 2 sources, not 31. Define the audience and open every source
Write down who needs the notebook and why. Then open every source and note in it, including ones irrelevant to the current question, and ask of each: may this audience see it?
A viewer gets read-only access to all the sources and notes in the notebook you share. So if one source is off limits for this audience, deselecting it for a question doesn’t help: it’s still in the notebook. Make a separate notebook with only the suitable sources, or send a checked summary instead.
Why this works: the notebook, not the answer, is what you’re sharing, so every source in it is part of the disclosure.
What you should see: a list of sources and notes, each marked suitable or not for this audience.
2. Choose the narrowest role
Use Viewer for a reading job: viewers can read the shared sources and notes. Editor can also add or remove sources and notes and share the notebook further, so keep it for real collaborators.
To sense-check a plan before you share, paste a description of it (not the restricted material itself):
Review this proposed sharing plan without changing access. Audience: [recipients and roles]. Purpose: [job]. Sources and notes: [inventory, with whether each may be shared with this audience]. Identify anything outside the audience's scope, the narrowest suitable role and what I should check after sharing. Say whether an answer-only summary would do the job instead of sharing the notebook.[recipients and roles], [job] and [inventory] come from step 1.
Why this works: a second look at the plan catches the source you’d stopped noticing.
What you should see: a short list of anything to remove, and a recommended role.
3. Share it, then check what they see
Open the notebook and select the Share icon. Add each person’s email address and choose Viewer or Editor, or copy a link to send. There’s also Copy link to chat view, which shows only the chat, but Google says it doesn’t completely revoke a viewer’s access to the notebook’s contents. Treat it as a tidier screen, not a confidentiality boundary.
Then ask one recipient which sources they see in the Sources panel. It should match your list. Don’t switch to a public link because one person can’t sign in; sort out their account, or send a reviewed summary.
Why this works: the recipient’s Sources panel is the only direct evidence of what they received.
What you should see: the recipient list and roles you meant, and a recipient’s confirmation of the source count.
Check the result
- Every source in the shared notebook is suitable for every recipient.
- Recipients have Viewer unless they genuinely need to edit.
- A recipient has confirmed the sources they can see.
- Nothing off limits is reachable through a chat-view link.
The usual failure: a restricted source is deselected for one answer and the whole notebook is shared anyway. The answer looked clean; the recipients can still open the source. Spot it by counting the sources in the notebook you shared, not the ones used in the answer.
This notebook includes [source] that isn't suitable for [audience]. Revise the plan to use a separate notebook containing only [suitable sources], or an answer-only summary for review. Keep the original private. State exactly what recipients would receive and how to check their access.[source] is the restricted item; [audience] and [suitable sources] come from step 1.
Worked example: an event guide doesn’t need the costing note
Fictional example. An events coordinator’s notebook holds:
1. Public event schedule
2. Visitor FAQ (arrival, parking, accessibility)
3. Internal costing note (catering and venue rates)Guests need arrival information and the schedule. The coordinator deselected the costing note, asked “What should guests know about arriving?”, got a clean answer and shared the notebook with the guest list as Viewer.
- The failure. The answer used two sources, but the notebook held three. As viewers, guests could open the costing note.
- The repair. She removed the guests’ access, created a new notebook called Guest guide with sources 1 and 2, checked its notes, and shared that as Viewer. One guest confirmed two sources in the Sources panel, which is the example result at the top of this page.
- What removal doesn’t do. Taking access away doesn’t prove nobody opened or copied the costing note while they had it. That goes through the organisation’s incident process.
Try it
Task kit for this job: Download (ZIP) · Reusable instructions
Go deeper
Optional training: Know what public links share
You can make a notebook public so anyone with a Google account and the link can open it; they must be signed in. If you own a public notebook, you can also share its outputs, such as Audio Overviews, slide decks and reports, and anyone with that output’s link can view it, even without signing in. A public notebook exposes its sources like any shared one. Check your account’s eligibility and the exact link before using either, and don’t treat a link labelled “audio” or “chat” as a narrower permission.
Optional training: Keep a small disclosure record
For anything shared outside the team, keep a note with the notebook:
Audience and purpose:
Sources and notes cleared for that audience:
Excluded material:
Notebook or summary shared:
Recipient roles:
Recipient check:
Owner and review date:When someone later asks to share it with a supplier as well, the record tells you what to remove first.
Optional training: Send a summary instead
Sometimes the right share is no notebook at all. Ask for an answer-only summary, check it against the suitable sources, then share it as a document whose own permissions you set. A new document has its own sharing settings, so check those too. Share an AI result without sharing the whole conversation covers that handover.