# Open your first folder before creating an account

> From the site, you name your first real folder, create your workspace, and the folder waits for you with your trade’s template.

## Start with the folder, not the sign-up form

A new tool asks for an account first, then a workspace, then settings, and only after that do you see what it is for. Many people stop before then. Here the order is reversed: you start from the folder you actually have to open, and the account comes after.

## How it works

"Open my first folder" opens a window, with one question per screen:

- **Your trade**, so the product speaks its language. This question is skipped when the site already knows it, and you can always change it. "Other trade" exists too.
- **The folder’s name**, the way you usually name it: client, reference, place. An example specific to your trade guides you, and you can change the name afterwards. Beside it, a scene shows that folder a few days later: client invited, documents received, a reminder gone out on its own, meeting confirmed.
- **Your workspace**: your email address is enough, with no password and no bank card. The Premium trial starts with the workspace, then the Free plan takes over, with no time limit.

If you are already signed in, this last step disappears: the folder opens straight away.

## What is kept, and what is not yet

Before sign-up, nothing is saved. The draft (the trade and the folder’s name) travels encrypted in the link your sign-up lands on, and stays valid for 2 hours. After that, a message takes you back to the form: it only takes a minute to pick it up again.

On arrival, Kolinea creates your workspace if you have none, then opens the folder under the name you gave it. Your trade’s folder template is imported into the workspace, without announcing it: its publications wait in the composer, each one ready to prepare or to remove in a click. Nothing goes out until you publish. See [folder templates](/en/features/folder-templates). With "Other trade", the folder opens without a template.

Then you add your client contacts (name and email address), and complete the information and options from the folder.

One draft opens only one folder: reloading the page, clicking the link twice or reopening it takes you back to the folder already created.

## In practice

**Lawyers.** You prepare "Succession Lefèvre" between two appointments. You name the folder, enter your address, and find the folder in your workspace, with the publications of your trade’s template waiting to be prepared.

**Home building.** "Maison Durand" opens from your trade’s page. You add the couple as contacts: they answer through a link, without an account (see [client access without an account](/en/features/client-access-without-an-account)).

## What it does not do

The scene shows moments that are true of any folder in the trade: it does not promise what yours will hold. What your folder contains depends on you and on the template.

The signed link is meant for the person who wrote the draft. If someone else opens it, a page first asks them to confirm opening the folder: only after that confirmation is it created in the workspace. No confirmation is asked in the browser that wrote the draft, nor for an account born from that sign-up that has no folder yet.

If your plan no longer allows opening a folder, nothing is created: a message says so, naming the folder concerned.

This is not the trial folder: the trial is a disposable copy, opened without an account, of which nothing is carried over. Here the folder is yours and it lasts. See [the trial folder](/en/features/trial-folder).

## Read also

- [Trial folder](/en/features/trial-folder), to try without an account before opening your own
- [Folder templates](/en/features/folder-templates), what your trade’s template prepares
- [Client access without an account](/en/features/client-access-without-an-account), how your clients answer
- [Participants and team](/en/features/participants-and-team), to add the people on the folder