How to hard indent with spaces in org-mode?

I am trying to copy an org mode outline to give to someone who doesn't have emacs. According to this: [https://orgmode.org/manual/Hard-indentation.html](https://orgmode.org/manual/Hard-indentation.html) , I should be able to hard indent with spaces by setting those three variables. But the ascii document is still indented with asterisks. I also tried turning off `org-indent-mode`, still has leading asterisks.

you question is not clear. so you are **trying to copy an org mode outline to give to someone who doesn't have emacs**, what's the problem here? you never mentioned what problem you were trying to solve.

Also, if you want to share org file to a non-emacs user, just export your org file into a text file. **C-c C-e** by default takes you to the dispatcher, where you can see the export to text option.

Just use the exporter: `C-x C-e`, and export it as any kind of file. I do often share as HTML or use pandoc and ox-pandoc to share a docx. Also: org indent just hides the asterisks, it doesn’t actually erase them as they’re part of the markup format.

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