WalkingPDF

guide

The production index columns that matter

A production index is the map between Bates numbers and documents. The columns that matter are the ones a receiving party will use to load, search and object: Bates begin, Bates end, attachment begin and end, confidentiality, document date, document type, the original filename and the native path. Everything else is convenience. Get these wrong and the set loads with documents attached to the wrong parents.

The minimum viable index

  • Bates begin and Bates end, as text, never as a number formatted by the spreadsheet.
  • Attachment begin and Attachment end, empty for a document with no attachments.
  • Confidentiality, spelled exactly as the protective order spells it.
  • Document date in ISO form, empty when the document has none.
  • Document type, from a short controlled list rather than free text.
  • Original filename with its extension, and the native path where a native exists.

Why attachment ranges are not optional

An email and its attachments form a family. The parent's Bates range covers the email; the attachment range covers everything attached to it. Without those two columns a receiving party can load the documents but cannot reconstruct the family, and the review tool will show attachments as unrelated documents. The same relationship is what the audit checks when it looks for broken families.

How to use this with the audit

You do not need to send us an index to get a check - the audit reads the Bates stamps and the load file directly. The index becomes useful when you want to compare what you intended to produce against what the files actually contain, which is the failure the findings CSV is designed to show you row by row.

Frequently asked questions

Is the index the same thing as a DAT file?

No. A DAT is a delimited load file with the fields a review platform imports; an index is the human-readable map. They should agree, and when they do not, the audit reports the DAT as authoritative.

Can I download a template?

Not yet - a template file is part of the samples work and is not published. The column list above is the specification to build against.

Keep reading

guide What a slip sheet for a native file has to contain A production that includes native files - spreadsheets, presentations, anything not printed to images - needs a slip sheet for each one: a page in the numbered set that stands where the native would have been, carrying the Bates number, the confidentiality designation, the original filename and enough metadata to identify the file. Without it the paper set has a hole where the native should be, and the receiving party cannot tell a missing document from a withheld one. guide How to QC an incoming production A production you receive has to load, read and reconcile before anyone can review it. These twelve checks run in the order that surfaces the expensive failures first: does the load file import, does every row have an image, does the numbering hold, and is every page searchable. Run them before the review clock starts, not after. hub Watermark glossary A short glossary of the words used around PDF watermarking, each defined in one or two sentences before any detail: what a watermark is, the difference between text and image marks, what diagonal, background, tiled and confidential mean, and why a dynamic watermark is not the same as a fixed one. Every term links back to the page that shows it in use. guide How to watermark a PDF To watermark a PDF, upload the file, choose a watermark style, type your wording, set the opacity to somewhere between 25% and 35%, apply it to every page and download the marked copy. The whole procedure takes about a minute in a browser, needs no software, and the original file is not changed - you keep the marked copy as a new file. guide What is a PDF watermark? A PDF watermark is text or an image placed on the pages of a document to say something about it - who it belongs to, what state it is in, or who may read it. It becomes part of the page rather than a note attached to the file, so it appears in prints, screenshots and single-page extracts, and it carries no technical protection: anyone can still open, copy and forward the document. guide Batch watermarking PDF files Batch watermarking means applying the same mark to several PDFs so they look like one set. With a browser tool you do it by settling the settings once - style, wording, opacity, colour - then running the tool once per file with those same settings, which takes under a minute each and produces consistent output without installing anything or creating an account.