Electronic Casebooks
Below are some videos I have made to demonstrate:
- the preparation I do for a hearing using electronic bundles
- some of the steps for constructing an electronic casebook
- my method for bulk hyperlinking.
Bulk hyperlinking
Below is a summary of what I do for bulk hyperlinking, but there are many other methods that would also work. All of this relates to the Senior Courts Civil Electronic Document Protocol, which requires documents to be named with a defined structure (ie 101.0001, 201.0001, with the first part being the volume and the numbers after the decimal representing a page number).
Automated index hyperlinking
This site has an excellent stand-alone tool for hyperlinking documents in bulk using a spreadsheet, which is what I use: http://try67.blogspot.com/2012/03/acrobat-create-custom-links-from-text.html.
The table of contents can be hyperlinked by simply running the tool, filling in the path to the document you want to hyperlink, and then filling in the path to this generic csv file (which finds all matches for xx.xxxx or xxx.xxxx and links to a file with the corresponding name).
The whole process is shown in this video:
Automated pinpoint hyperlinking
For pinpoint hyperlinking, I have developed my own master template (see below), which is populated to list all the casebook pages, and has formulae to build the relevant hyperlink reference for each page. Once created, this spreadsheet can then be applied to hyperlink automatically any pdfs you may create in the case (the index, submissions, cross-examination notes, chronologies, key document diagrams etc).
I have demonstrated the process in a video here:
Instructions for using generic pinpoint builder
- Using the above generic pinpoint builder*, in column B (list of docs), cut and paste the Electronic Casebook filename docids (select them all at once and copy the filenames with <ctrl-c>, then paste the names into column B of your spreadsheet, then find and replace “.pdf” with “”).
- In column A (full list of pages), build a full listing of all the case bundle pages using just the beginning and end numbers of each bundle. Use “fill": In column A row 2, enter the starting page number for the first bundle. With the cursor on that cell, go to Home → Fill → Series → (Column, Linear, Step value .0001, then enter the Stop value to match the end page of the volume including the prefix). Then in the next cell at the bottom of that generated list, enter the starting page number for the next bundle etc, and repeat this "fill" process for all bundles.
- Check the numbers in columns A and B all have four decimal places (custom format to "00.0000" or "000.0000" if necessary).
* If you need to copy the pre-filled formulae to more rows, then column C needs to be entered with <ctrl-shift-enter> (because it is an array).
Your master spreadsheet should look like this:
Create your pinpoint hyperlinking csv file
Cut and paste the data from Column A and G of the master spreadsheet into the second "list to use" sheet (use special paste, values). Make sure the docids are still 4 decimals places (custom format the columns if required). Copy this spreadsheet to a new book and save it as a csv file.
Your final hyperlinking csv file for executing in Gilad's app should look like this:
