Dealing with production electronically is a dramatic improvement over the days of boxes of paper, Post-Its and highlighters, but it is not without its challenges. Many files do not easily lend themselves to printing (spreadsheets, databases and accounting systems) or can’t be reduced to PDF at all (WMV, MOV, Wav, MP3, etc. – these can be reduced to a transcript but that can be expensive and time consuming – so knowing if these are important enough records to transcribe is handy). In the flood of documents, it is very easy to forget that these files exist and to ensure that they are reviewed.
As mentioned in Part 1 of this blog series, how you handle these files is, in some measure, dependent on how you review documents. If you are using a system that only handles PDFs, it is important that these native files have visibility so we recommend that each native file have a companion marker PDF that denotes the existence of a file. At least then it is harder to forget that the file exists or needs to be reviewed.
Some systems such as i-View are capable of logging these files and providing excellent visibility through its document index. i-View allows the documents to be coded with date, description, witness and subject matter tags.
Date coding allows it to appear in chron order so its role in the sequence of events can be fully understood. You also have he option of opening the file directly from i-View through the Launch Program button. Obviously, making it easy to review the file will increase the odds of someone really looking at the file.
While ensuring visibility for the program is great, there is still the issue of coding selected sections so that it is easy to know what is important. i-View’s solution to this dilemma is to allow the user to process Print-Screen shots of the native file as it runs and then saving them as images into the system. With that process, it becomes possible to document exactly what is key in these native files.
In i-View, navigate to the spreadsheet or other native file, open the file in the native application, find a key section, hit the print screen button (possibly PrtSc or FN + Prtsc button depending on your keyboard).
Switch to the i-View program and select the Save Screen Capture button.
The screen shot will be pasted into the program and then you will have the option of just left clicking and dragging to crop the picture the way you want it.
Hit Save as PDF and now you have preserved a record of what was important in that native file.
This image can be coded, annotated, printed and produced.
It is not necessary to have i-View to use this Print Screen tactic for capturing key information. After you hit the print screen key, you can paste the image into Word or most other Office programs. You can right click on the image to crop it. That file can be saved and inserted for processing later.
These native files can be important and it is essential that there be a plan for identifying and preserve the essential sections.