To work with reports in Emma, use the reports button (pencil icon) on the left sidebar. In addition to the main editable report document described below, Emma offers an interactive Live Report view focused on red flags and risk distributions, enabling M&A lawyers to explore risk concentrations quickly and filter by several criteria — see the "Live Report" article in this collection for its charts, filters, drill-down list, and sharing with report-only viewers.

Why this matters in M&A due diligence

The Report document is designed for lawyers and finance analysts delivering a polished, client- or committee-ready deliverable. Customising reports with background images and precise page layout helps legal and finance teams produce more professional outputs for clients and investment committees — clear visual structuring makes critical findings stand out and reinforces house style or client branding, enhancing the credibility and impact of your deliverables.

Standard Report Document

Emma supports a paginated, styled report document designed for formal client or committee delivery. The classic Report editor offers preservation of manual edits, export, styling, free-form and structured content editing, and real-time collaboration.

Keeping your report current

Whenever you open an existing report document, Emma automatically merges any new findings, recommendations, or relevant changes from the latest data room state directly into your report—without overwriting your manual edits. This ensures that your report always stays up-to-date with new developments, while preserving all your previous work.

What manual edits are preserved?

• Custom titles and key issue text inside risk tables
• Renamed areas, document types, and documents
• Cover page edits (such as deal codenames, custom dates, confidentiality lines, etc.)
• Free-form paragraphs or headings you inserted between sections
• Edits to risk findings, levels, and recommendations made from the report or elsewhere in Emma
• Any per-page background images or colors applied (see below)

Any new data (findings, recommendations, sections) that appears in the data room since your last session is added seamlessly into the report. None of your manual changes, narrative, or styling will be lost. Sections that have been removed from the underlying data room remain in the report as "orphans" at the end, allowing you to decide if they should be kept or deleted.

This merging process happens automatically every time you open a report, so your deliverable never falls out of sync with the latest data in the data room—even in ongoing processes or when new findings land late.

Opening a report

The editor opens from a data room's Report tab. First open. Emma generates a fresh document from the data room's current state: risks (with their levels, summaries, and recommendations), the document tree (areas, document types, documents), and cover-page metadata such as the client name, date, and any filters in effect.

The generator produces a fully structured document containing a cover page, areas as top-level sections, document types as subsections, risk tables sorted by severity, and recommendation blocks. During this phase the editor surface shows a skeleton (toolbar, sidebar, three A4 placeholders). Long reports with thousand files can take a few seconds to appear.

Subsequent opens. The saved document is loaded, and fresh findings, recommendations, and changes are blended into your previous work automatically, preserving all manual edits as described above. The document is not fully regenerated; changes and free narrative all persist as part of the report itself. If there is a drift between the document and the live risk or answer data, Emma surfaces a passive notification (see below).

Manual regeneration (admin only)

For advanced situations, Emma now provides an admin-only feature to manually trigger a full merge of the current data room state into an existing report. When this Regenerate Document action is used, Emma automatically creates a backup version of the report before running the merge, accessible in the Versions panel of the report sidebar. This allows admins to restore to a prior state if necessary, providing additional safety and flexibility.

The manual regenerate option is available only to administrators and is the recommended approach if you need to force-refresh a particularly out-of-date report or after a bulk data update. The backup-and-restore workflow means you won't lose previous versions—restoring from any backup is always possible.

Migrating old reports (backfill)

Emma includes a backfill script for administrators to update existing reports that were created before this merging logic was enabled. This script can be run to bring older reports up to date with the current data room contents, automatically applying the same merge logic as an ordinary open or admin-triggered regeneration. If you're an admin and need to update a portfolio of old reports, ask your technical contact about running the backfill tool.

Layout

The editor has three regions:

• Toolbar (top, sticky): formatting tools, insertions, view controls, filters, styling, export, undo/redo, and the page counter. Sticky so it remains available regardless of scroll position.
• Sidebar (left, adjustable): two tabs, outline for navigation and versions for history. Hidden on screens narrower than lg (typically below 1024 px) to maximise document surface on smaller laptops.
• Document surface (centre, scrollable): paginated A4 or Letter pages with margins, headers, footers, and live page numbers. Per-page background images and colors display as set (see below).

Editing a report

What is auto-generated and what is free-form

Reports mix two kinds of content that behave differently. Understanding the distinction matters because edits to each propagate in different ways.

The editor treats both uniformly from a typing perspective: place the cursor and type. The difference is what happens behind the scenes (see Collaboration for how business-object edits propagate across surfaces).

A practical implication: if the user edits a risk summary in the editor, that change is visible in the risks tab of the data room and in the document viewer. If the user adds a paragraph of narrative between two risks, that paragraph lives only in the report.

Free-text editing

Standard rich-text editing throughout the document.

Text formatting (selection-scoped, applied via the toolbar or shortcuts):

• Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough
• Highlight (yellow)
• Text colour: 16 preset swatches, native colour picker, hex input
• Font family per selection (the document default lives in Styling)

Block styles (line-level):

• Paragraph
• Heading 1 through 5
• Eyebrow: small-caps decorative variant
• Jumbo: oversized display

Lists and alignment:

Bullet list, ordered list, align left / centre / right. Text-style marks like font family and colour are scoped to the selection, the same way Word handles them. Changing a heading style or alignment applies to the current line.

Pasting from external sources (Word, web pages, other Emma reports) preserves basic formatting where possible. Pasted content is mapped to the editor's block styles; styles without a direct equivalent fall back to Paragraph.

Rich edition:

• Image inline insertion
• Frame insertion (allowing to manipulate image size / position)
• Horizontal separator
• Page break
• New empty page
• Page(s) background color and image (see below)

Per-page background images and colors

You can place a custom background image or color behind the text of any individual page. Background images elevate your report's visual presentation and can be used for cover pages, dividers, decorative accents, or watermarks, helping reports look more professional and tailored for client or committee audiences.

• To apply a background image or color, use the paint bucket button in the toolbar. This opens the Page Background popover.
• In the popover, choose the page range you want to target (current, custom, or all pages).
• Background image:
• Upload a PNG, JPG, or WebP image. The image is uploaded and applied to your selected pages. If a background image already exists for a page, you can replace it by uploading a new one, or remove it using the provided button.
• Images are cover-cropped to fill the page, maintaining aspect ratio but cropping overflow (ideal for full-bleed covers or decorative accents).
• Background color:
• Pick from a swatch or enter a custom color. You may use both a background image and color on a page; the image displays above the color.
• Both background images and colors are saved as part of your organisation's template when you use Save as org template in the styling dialog. This means new reports will automatically inherit these settings.
• When exporting to DOCX or PDF, backgrounds are preserved exactly as you see them in the editor, including any cover or content page images. This ensures consistent style in deliverables, without extra formatting after export.

Practical deal workflow:

• Use a strong visual image for your cover or section dividers to reinforce firm branding.
• Subtler images or watermarks on content pages can improve perceived quality, especially in reports circulated to external stakeholders or presented to an IC.

Editing business objects (risks and recommendations)

Risk findings, risk levels, and recommendations are surfaced as structured cells inside generated tables. The user interacts with them in three ways.

1. Edit the body text inline. Click into a risk-summary cell or a recommendation cell and type. Markdown formatting is preserved and the change is persisted to the underlying entity. While the cursor is inside one of these cells, the row is locked for other collaborators (see Live presence).

2. Use the inline action menu. A floating action menu opens from any risk row or recommendation row. It exposes:

• Risk level (risk rows only): High, Medium, Low, Unspecified, No Risk. Each is preceded by a colour dot. Switching a level moves the row to its corresponding risk-level table; the table glides to its new position with a FLIP animation while surrounding content reflows.
• Add Recommendation: Pre-Closing, Closing Action, Post-Closing, Specific Indemnity, Specific Tax Indemnity, Representations & Warranties, No Action Needed. Document or risk level.
• View risk in document (risk rows only): opens the document viewer on the right tab, with the risk pre-selected. See View risk in document.

3. Drive changes from elsewhere. A risk level changed in the data-room risk matrix or the document viewer is patched into the open report in place, with no banner (see Collaboration).

Risk tables are always sorted by severity (High, Medium, Low, Unspecified, No Risk). When a level changes inside the editor, the affected tables re-order and animate to their new position. When the same change comes from outside, the tables jump rather than animate, so the analyst notices that something shifted.

Cover page

The cover page is fully editable like any other content. The generator emits five role-tagged blocks the user can recognise on sight:

• Eyebrow: small label above the title.
• Hero: the report title (H1).
• Stats: eyebrow-styled stat lines.
• Date: eyebrow-styled date line.
• Filters: eyebrow-styled summary of which filters were applied at generation time.

Cover-specific typography (Eyebrow size, Title size and weight, Subtitle size and weight, Title tracking) lives in Styling, Typography section. Toggling Eyebrow or Jumbo on a cover line in the toolbar correctly clears the cover-role overlay so the change round-trips through DOCX export.

Typical edits on the cover page include replacing the auto-generated title with the deal codename, updating the date format to match the firm's house style, and adding a confidentiality line below the stats block. Cover pages benefit especially from custom background images for branding or emphasis.

Images and image frames

Two ways to put an image on the page:

• Inline image: toolbar Insert image button, opens a file picker (PNG, JPG, GIF, WebP, SVG). The image is uploaded to S3 and inserted at the cursor.
• Image frame: toolbar Image frame button, drops a free-floating, draggable, resizable frame on the current page.

Once placed, an image frame supports:

• Drag the body to move; the frame is clamped within page bounds.
• Resize from the bottom-right handle. Hold Shift to lock the aspect ratio.
• Double-click to re-upload.
• A small floating toolbar appears above a selected frame with Upload image and Delete frame buttons.
• Keyboard while selected: Backspace or Delete removes; Escape deselects; Cmd/Ctrl + D duplicates and selects the copy.

Inline images flow with the text and reflow on pagination. Image frames hold their absolute position on the page and are well suited to cover-page hero images, watermarks, or floating illustrations alongside text.

Pages

• Insert blank page: toolbar button, adds a fully empty page after the current one.
• Page break: toolbar button or Ctrl + Shift + Enter.
• Page background: toolbar paint-bucket. Opens a popover where the user picks a page range (from to to, or All), then a colour from a 16-swatch grid, native picker, or hex input, and/or uploads a background image. Apply, Cancel, or Clear.
• If both a background image and color are specified for the same page, the image displays on top of the color. Both are visible in the editor and preserved in export.

Pagination is filter-aware: when filters hide content, page-break markers are hidden too, so the document never shows orphan empty pages.

Navigation

Outline sidebar

Hierarchical table of contents under the outline tab:

• Areas at the top level (semibold; section numbers shown as dotted if present).
• Document types indented under each area (numbers shown with same convention).
• Documents indented further (muted).

Each area and document-type row has a chevron to expand or collapse. Click a row label to scroll the editor to that section. As the user scrolls the document, the matching outline row highlights and its parents auto-expand.

Each area and document-type row also shows risk-count badges on the right (red for High, orange for Medium, yellow for Low). When risk-level filters are active, badges for muted levels are dimmed.

Document rows reveal a small file-icon button on hover that opens the document viewer for that file directly. This is the fastest path from the report to the source PDF when the analyst wants to verify a finding mid-edit.

Filtered-out entries appear at 40% opacity and are not clickable. Empty state: "No sections found".

Page counter and scroll

The toolbar shows a live page counter (e.g. 3 / 12) on the right. It updates as the user scrolls. There is no go-to-page input; use the outline or scroll directly.

Filters

The toolbar Filters button opens a popover with several multi-select filter sections:

• Risk Level: High, Medium, Low. Each is preceded by its colour dot.
• Areas: every area in the current report (dotted area numbers shown where present).
• Recommendations: Pre-Closing, Closing Action, Specific Indemnity, Specific Tax Indemnity, Representations & Warranties, No Action Needed.
• Labeled by: Human labeled, AI labeled.
• Document status: Reviewed, Unreviewed.

Filters combine as AND across sections and OR within a section. For example, selecting High and Medium in Risk Level plus Corporate in Areas shows risks that are (High OR Medium) AND in the Corporate area. To focus on lawyer-reviewed risks, use the Labeled by filter to select only "Human labeled" risks. Narrow document sections based on review status for process-specific reporting.

Active filters are reflected in:

• The visible report (non-matching content hidden)
• The outline (entries dimmed and unclickable)
• Risk-count badges (muted levels grayscaled)
• The DOCX or PDF export

A Clear all link resets every filter. The Filters button shows a numbered badge when filters are active.

View risk in document

From the inline action menu on any risk row, View risk in document opens the document viewer on the risks tab with the matching risk pre-selected. This is the canonical way to jump from the report to the source evidence without losing the analyst's place in the report: closing the document viewer returns the analyst to the same scroll position in the editor.

Collaboration

The editor is real-time collaborative. Multiple analysts can edit the same report at the same time without explicit coordination.

Live presence

Other editors' carets appear in the document with a coloured pointer and a name label. Selections highlight in the editor's colour for that user. Each connected user gets a stable colour for the duration of the session.

When another user is editing a specific risk or document-recommendation cell, the surrounding table picks up a subtle indigo overlay treatment to indicate the row is locked, so a second editor doesn't overwrite their work mid-edit. The lock releases as soon as the first user moves their cursor out of the cell.

Cross-surface awareness

Presence carries across surfaces:

• A risk being edited in the report editor is shown as "being edited" in the data room's risks tab and in the document viewer.
• A risk being edited in the document viewer is shown as locked in the report editor.

The mapping today:

This prevents the classic split-screen scenario where two analysts overwrite each other while one is in the report and the other is in the document viewer.

Versionning

The versions tab in the sidebar lets analysts snapshot the document and restore it later. This is the right tool for milestone snapshots (e.g. "draft sent to client 8 May", "post-call revisions").

• Save a version: type a name in the top input and click + (or press Enter). The current state of the document is captured with the user's name and timestamp.
• List of versions: each row shows the version label, date, and author (e.g. 8 May, 14:32, Jane Doe).
• Restore: hover a row to reveal the rotate-counterclockwise icon. Clicking it rolls the document back to that version, disconnects the live session, clears the local cache, and reconnects.

A restore is destructive at the document level: it replaces the live document for everyone connected, not just the user who triggered it. There is no client-side offline cache to fall back on. Save a version before any operation you might want to undo broadly (such as a wholesale style change or a paste of new content).

Restoring from admin-triggered regenerations: Any time an admin uses the manual Regenerate Document feature, the previous version of your report is automatically saved as a backup, labeled clearly in the Versions panel (e.g., "Admin regenerate — "). You can restore from any backup as needed.

Styling and templates

The toolbar Styling button (palette icon and label) opens the styling dialog. Changes apply live to the open document. The dialog has seven tabs.

The header strip indicates whether the report uses the organisation template or has been customised:

• Style your report. Changes apply live.: using the template.
• This report has custom styles different from your template.: overridden. A Reset to template action is available.

A Save as org template action becomes available when the report has been customised, letting the analyst promote the current style as the new organisation default (see Saving as the organisation template).

Styling panel

A list of style presets. Each card shows the preset name in its own font, a tagline, and a six-swatch row (page background, text colour, High, Medium, Low, NoRisk).

Current presets:

• Emma Standard (Arial baseline): the default, neutral and conservative, suitable for most M&A deliverables.
• Slate: muted, professional, dark accents.
• Atelier: serif-led, editorial feel for advisory firms with a literary brand.
• Nocturne: dark page background variant for screen-first deliverables.
• Terminal: monospaced, distinctive, well suited to tech-sector clients.

Applying a preset clears inline text-style marks first, so the new font and colours take effect across the whole document. The logo, footer text, and per-page background overrides (images or colors) are preserved.

Page setup

• Paper size: A4 Portrait, A4 Landscape, Letter Portrait, Letter Landscape.
• Margins: top, bottom, left, right (px, 0 to 200).

Typography

• Font family: same selector as the toolbar (Sans Serif, Serif, Monospace, Display).
• Body: Paragraph size, Line height, Paragraph spacing.
• Headings: Area (H2), Doc type (H3), Document (H4), each in pt.
• Cover: Eyebrow size, Title size, Subtitle size; Title weight, Subtitle weight; Title tracking (em).

A Reset sizes link appears when typography is dirty.

Colors

• Risk colours: High, Medium, Low, Unspecified, No Risk.
• Recommendations: recommendation accent colour.
• Document defaults: text colour and page background.

Tables

• Border colour and Header background for risk tables.
• Risk table column split: slider 20 to 80%, controls how much horizontal space is given to descriptions vs recommendations. Live caption updates as the slider moves.
• Risk indicator: four modes.
• Side border: coloured edge along the row.
• Coloured dot: small dot in the leading column.
• Coloured label: uppercase prefix in the header (HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW).
• None: no visual indicator beyond the table's section grouping. All four modes are mirrored in DOCX export.

Logo

• Image: drop-or-click to upload a PNG, JPG, or WebP. Action label "Drop or click to replace". When using the default Emma logo: "Using Emma (default)".
• Position: left, centre, right.
• Size: 8 to 48 pt slider with live label.
• Remove: appears when a custom logo is set, reverts to the default Emma logo.

Header and footer

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• Show page numbers: checkbox.
• Footer text: free text, e.g. "Confidential".
• Header and footer colour: colour picker with reset link when overridden.

Per-page backgrounds: images and colors

Per-page background overrides (images and colors) come from the toolbar paint-bucket popover (see above), not the styling dialog. The default page background color lives in Colors. The split is intentional:

• Per-page overrides are a layout decision, typically used for a single cover or divider page, decorative content pages, or watermarks.
• The document default applies everywhere without a specific override.

All per-page backgrounds are saved with the organisation template if you use Save as org template. This makes it easy to standardise cover pages or layout templates for the team.

Saving as the organisation template

The Save as org template action in the styling dialog header copies the current report's settings (typography, colours, table style, header and footer, logo, and any per-page background overrides) and stores them as the organisation's default. New reports generated after that point inherit the new template; existing reports keep whatever settings they were saved with.

This is the right path when one analyst has tuned a report to the firm's house style and the team wants future reports to start from the same baseline.

Export

The toolbar Export button opens an export dialog showing two options and a summary of any filters currently applied:

• Export DOCX: downloads report.docx with the full visual fidelity of the editor (typography, page setup, per-page backgrounds—including images and colors—header and footer, risk colours, table risk-indicator mode, logo, and any embedded images). Charts present in the editor are captured and embedded.
• Export PDF: same pipeline through the DOCX serializer, then converted to PDF.

The export dialog groups visible filters into sections such as Risk Level, Areas, Recommendations, Labeled by (AI/Human), and Document status (Reviewed/Unreviewed), each with clear recommendation labels. Filters are displayed so you can double-check before exporting.

Exports always reflect only the currently visible sections of the report, based on the active filters in the editor. For instance, exporting after filtering for "High" and "Medium" risk levels, human-labeled risks, and reviewed documents will generate a report containing only those findings and sections. This lets M&A lawyers generate a highly tailored export that focuses on critical risk classes and diligence stages relevant to deal context or the intended audience (e.g. focusing a draft for client review on lawyer-reviewed, high-priority risks, or producing a summary of AI-preclassified issues for syndicate triage).

To export the entire report, clear all filters in the toolbar filter dropdown before exporting.

Once you confirm, Emma starts the export and disables the export button until finished. A spinner shows in the toolbar and within the dialog.

Deal workflow tip: Use the export filters when you need to tailor outputs tightly to a particular diligence phase, audience, or evidence threshold — for example, scoping a draft to only human-reviewed red flags before committee sign-off, or presenting unreviewed/AI-flagged issues in a distinct appendix.

Keyboard shortcuts

Loading and recovery

• Initial load: full skeleton (toolbar, sidebar, three A4 placeholders) until the live session syncs.
• Stale data notice: If risk levels or answers have changed in the data room since the document was loaded, an amber passive notification appears at the top of the editor. This does not block editing or navigation, and there is no destructive regeneration action. You may continue working or dismiss the notice.
• Restore version: wipes local state and reconnects to the restored document; visible to every connected client.
• Connection drop: the editor reconnects automatically when the server is reachable. Local edits made while offline are merged through the CRDT layer once the connection is back. The user is not blocked from typing during a brief disconnect.

Common workflows

A handful of recurring flows worth documenting end to end.

Drafting a first deliverable

1. Open the report from the data room's Report tab. Wait for the initial generation to complete.
2. Edit the cover page: update the title, the date, the confidentiality line, and (optionally) upload a custom background image for that page.
3. Open Styling, pick the preset that matches the deliverable's audience (Slate for institutional, Atelier for boutique advisory, and so on).
4. Skim the outline; expand each area and review the risk tables. Use View risk in document to verify any finding that's been edited since generation.
5. Adjust risk levels and recommendations inline using the action menu.
6. Save a version named "v1 internal review" before sharing the draft.
7. Export DOCX.

Filtering for a focused export

1. Open Filters from the toolbar.
2. Select any combination of risk levels, areas, recommendations, Labeled by (to filter AI- or human-classified risks), and Document status (to filter by reviewed or unreviewed documents) for your intended audience or reporting phase.
3. Check the outline and review the export dialog filter summary to ensure correct scope.
4. Export DOCX or PDF. Only the visible (filtered-in) sections and risks appear in the exported file.
5. Clear filters after export if needed so future users start unfiltered.

Customising per-page backgrounds

1. Select the page you want to modify in the report editor.
2. Click the paint bucket icon in the toolbar to open the background picker.
3. Choose the desired page or range.
4. Upload an image for a full-page background or select a background color (or both). You can replace or remove images as needed.
5. Confirm your choices. Images and colors appear immediately in the editor.
6. Save as org template if this style should be the new default for all reports.

Collaborating live

1. Two or more analysts open the same report. Each sees the others' carets with a coloured label.
2. Decide informally who edits which area to avoid contention; the lock overlay will warn of any overlap.
3. Use the outline to keep track of where colleagues are working.
4. Save a version at the end of each session as a checkpoint.

Reacting to data drift

1. If risk levels or answers have changed at the data-room level, an amber passive stale-data notice appears at the top of the editor.
2. There is no destructive regenerate action. Continue working as usual, or dismiss the notice if the change does not affect your deliverable.
3. If needed, you may manually update narrative or risk data by editing the relevant sections. To capture a point-in-time view, save a version before making major structural or styling changes.

If you need additional help or you encounter any other problem, don't hesitate to reach out to us through the chat bubble in the bottom right or to contact [email protected]

Updated on: 23/07/2026