How can I print out tickets that are on my app only

Reservations shown the app can also be exported as a pdf using the share button.

But the pass itself can only be in the app. And the Reservation will not be of much use without a valid ticket or your Interrail pass.

Thanks very much for these prompt replies. I certainly understand that the Interrail pass with the train journeys saved to My Trip is what I have to have; and I’ve also made seat reservations where they are compulsory. I understand that I don’t have to print anything, but what I mean by each ticket I wish to print is the ticket that appears in the Rail Pass when I click on Show Ticket, with a QR code or barcode. 

I did receive email confirmations for seat reservations but they did not include a barcode so while I’ve printed them out, they clearly won’t work on their own. However the ticket attachment sent with my Eurostar email confirmations do include the QR code and on previous trips I was able to scan the paper version at the ticket gate. 

I can’t find a Share button on the app with which I could export a ticket as a pdf and then print it from my email account. The only option I can see is to take a screenshot and forward that to my email, but the screenshot doesn’t include both the barcode and all the info on the ticket.

In Ireland a printed QR code is generally accepted by transport operators, event venues etc, just as the same code is accepted on a phone screen. IF the Interrail QR /barcode is accepted only on the app, there’s no protection from a phone or phone connection malfunction - and for example I’ve read reviews by people whose mobile ticket disappeared from their screen just as they opened it in a train station. We all know too that large and small online systems can suffer cyber attacks or go offline for other reasons. So while I know that most people don’t consider printing tickets in advance of a journey, I find it a very helpful precaution and I’m very disappointed if it’s not possible.

For a newcomer, it takes a while to figure out the difference on the app between My Trip and My Pass, and to ensure that information entered manually really has been saved. So being unable to print out each ticket is an added hassle - and I really hope it won’t cause problems during the trip. 

Not all seat reservations have a barcode. It depends on the train and on where you book. Especially optional reservations can be without barcode, since nobody else needs to see them.

As already explained, the travel day ticket with barcode is only valid in the app, and as such, no provisions have been made to export it. You can indeed take a screenshot but that is not valid to travel on. I haven't read any story that the barcode disappeared as you open it. What can happen, when you have a bad internet connection, is that showing the barcode takes a long time (minutes), since the app struggles with bad internet. It works well with good internet and also without internet the barcode will show immediately if you had created it earlier.

Finally, it sounds like you have already activated your pass and travel days. Please note that this is not a good idea. You can only cancel activation before validity starts, which is at midnight. If anything happens after that, e.g. you wake up ill, then it will be too cancel and the clock starts ticking and you can loose travel days.

The pdf is only for reservations bought from interrail, not for the ticket part.

The mobile Pass is only valid in the app as was already mentioned. (if you did not want to be dependant on a phone you could have bought the paper Version, although that one comes with its own disadvantages)

Thanks indeed on the pdf, Marvin. I saw the paper version option but definitely wanted the mobile app, with the choice of printing out bookings as well. Not one or the other but a form of both! 

Thanks very much too to RVDBorgt for your explanation. It’s reassuring and does clarify the situation on the barcode and why it can’t be exported.

I don’t think I have activated the pass and I certainly didn’t intend to until I’m about to travel. I will have a look tomorrow but if it did happen, it’s because something in the process wasn’t clear to me at the time. 

I have all my tickets in the My Pass section of the app and they appear under the relevant Travel Days, but I presume that’s not the same as activation.

Thanks again for replying to my queries. They may seem pedantic but as I’ve ten travel days in total and a few journeys on a few of those days, it makes sense to me to think it all through - and to have printouts too where possible! 

If you can show the tickets for each travel day, then you have both activated the pass and activated your travel days.

Thanks for letting me know this about the activation. I was not aware that showing and opening the tickets would activate the pass so it seems to be another example of something that isn’t intuitive or clear about the app. I tried to read all the info in advance and discussed it with my sister who is also travelling.

I wanted to be sure that I had actually booked all of my train journeys as well as the seat reservations and that seemed to be the only way to do so. When I had to manually enter details for bookings that couldn’t be made through the app, or which I made on my laptop for other reasons, I was rather worried that one or two of them hadn’t been saved. 

I really want to be able to recommend Interrail travel to others as I’ve been choosing ferries and trains over flights in the past few years due to the climate crisis. So it’s disappointing to find that there are pitfalls of this sort in the process.

I just have to hope that both of us will be able to travel on the dates and in the period intended and that others don’t find themselves in this situation and unable to cancel.

You can cancel the activation of the pass as long as it is still before the set start date.

It doesn't. You activate the pass in step 3 of the activation procedure, where you select a start date:

https://www.interrail.eu/en/interrail-passes/interrail-mobile-pass/getting-started

You activate a travel day by adding a journey to your pass. This creates a ticket. You can't create a ticket without having activated your pass.

There's no need to activate the pass to make reservations. You can add journeys to your trip without activating the pass, and see the links to reservation websites.

As I already said: the app doesn't make any reservations. All reservations are made on a website, either through a link in the app, or on your laptop. Where you book reservations is irrelevant: you can book where you like. There are often multiple websites where you can book, or you can also use ticket offices.

I'm curious about one thing: what made you activate the pass and the travel days? Did you maybe just follow the steps in the confirmation mail without realising what this was?

In any case, this is a good introduction to Interrail:

https://www.seat61.com/how-to-use-an-interrail-pass.htm

Thanks again for these clarifications. I’m busy with work matters but I’ll read all of this properly by this weekend and act on it as necessary. If I’ve further observations or questions then, I’ll return to this forum, which is really useful.  

Further on the points above, it’s not clear to me how to cancel the activation of a Pass and this is not explained in the User Guide for Mobile Passes under FAQ on the Pass (a section of very useful info that I only found a few days ago, as it’s rather buried at the bottom of about 10 other FAQs)

In fact in the User Guide, it describes the three steps to activate the Pass, which we followed. It gives no warnings about not activating the pass until the last minute, as it then describes searching for journeys, adding them to the Pass, using new Travel Days on a flexi-pass and how Show Ticket works. It also says the activating the pass can be done’right after adding your Pass to your device, or you can choose to do it later’. Then it goes on to describe how to add journeys to the Pass, how to show tickets etc. 

So to answer the question on what made me activate the pass and the travel days, the first answer is that there was nothing in the official information warning me that it was a risk to do this before the start of travel; and it was said that a Travel Day can be cancelled up to midnight CET the day before the journey. The second reason I did it was that I wanted to see all my journeys set out on the Pass in advance, so that I’d be clear about my Travel Days and train times - and as I wanted to be sure that all were actually booked including those I’d added manually, it seemed best to do this on My Pass. 

Now that the start date is only three days away, I’m not keen on de-activating the whole pass and I haven’t seen how to do that described online. I can see that on My Trip, I can change the button to the right of a journey from yellow to grey so I presume that’s how to de-activate a specific trip? But is my booking still valid for that trip once I activate it again? What about the seat reservations I’ve made?

The alternative is to decide before midnight the previous day if there’s a major reason to cancel a travel day rather than de-activating the whole pass or the specific trips. 

Again I appreciate getting clarifications on this and I can see that if I wake up really ill on a specific date, it will be too late to cancel those trips. But again, it would be helpful if all of this was explained more clearly on the app itself. 

I had guessed that indeed. I find this a big shortcoming of the information on the Interrail/Eurail websites.

You don't actually book anything with the mobile pass. It's just a digital equivalent of the paper pass. Adding a train to your pass is the digital equivalent of writing a train in the paper trip diary. You need to do that to register the trains you use, but it does not book anything.