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For a Positive Outlook to Discovering Emails, You Need a Closed Outlook: eDiscovery Best Practices

Does that statement seem confusing?  Let me explain.

Let’s call this a “tip of the day”.  As you may know, at CloudNine (shameless plug warning!), we have an automated processing capability for enabling clients to load and process their own data – they can use this capability to load their data into our review platform or they can even process data for loading into their own preferred review platform if they want.  So, we can still help you even if you already use Relativity or a number of other popular platforms.

Regardless of that fact, most of our users are using the processing capability to process emails, usually from Outlook Personal Storage Table (PST) files.  Let’s face it, despite increased volumes of social media and other types of electronically stored information, emails are still predominant in eDiscovery.  And, for those users, we get one issue more than any other when it comes to processing those Outlook emails:

They still have Outlook open with the PST file opened when they attempt to upload that PST file or when they try to create a ZIP file containing the Outlook PST.

The resulting ZIP file that is created (either by the user or by our client application if the data is not already contained in an archive file) will almost invariably be corrupted or empty.  Either way, this results in a failure during processing of the loaded data – because, that data is simply corrupt.

So, my tip of the day is this: Before attempting to create a ZIP (or RAR or other type of archive) of a PST file (or before you upload it to a platform like CloudNine for processing), make sure that Outlook is closed or at least that the PST file is closed within Outlook.  For a positive outlook to discovering emails, you need a closed Outlook.

Does that make sense now?  :o)

So, what do you think?  Is email still the predominant source of discoverable ESI in your organization?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Sometimes You May Need Turn to 34 Year Old Technology to Get the Job Done: eDiscovery Best Practices

If you’ve worked with computers for over three decades like I have, you remember some of the old ways we used computers to support litigation. Our colleague, Jane Gennarelli, covered some of those in her recent “Throwback Thursdays” series (here are the links to last year’s 12-part series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12). But, a 34 year old software application can still be useful today.

Amy Bowser-Rollins’ excellent blog Litigation Support Guru is currently running a “Fast Tip Friday” series with videos containing fast tips (and tricks) for handling various litigation support tasks. Last Friday’s post, was titled Fast Tip Friday – Using DOS to Create File Listing.

“DOS” you say? Surely, you don’t mean venerable, old MS-DOS, which was originally introduced by Microsoft in 1981? Is that thing even still around?

Yes, it is. As, Amy demonstrates, even though we’re in the GUI age of Windows software, you can still get to DOS when you need to do so and it can still be useful to help generate file listings.

In the example that Amy walks through, she uses the DOS “dir” command (short for directory – in Windows, those are represented as folders in Windows Explorer) to generate a sample file listing. She uses parameters “/s” (to include all subdirectories within the current directory), /b (to use the “bare” format with no heading information) and “> filelisting.txt” (to write the results to a text file). She then demonstrates how you can load the resulting text file into Excel to work with your file listing.

There are parameters to show hidden or system files and to sort the files by any one of several sort options. You can also select specific files or types of files (e.g., all Excel files as “dir *.xlsx”).

File listings of directories in DOS can be useful for everything from an inventory of files to be processed or perhaps a control listing of files to be produced to perform a Quality Control check.

I have used DOS regularly to generate listing during the discovery process. In one project several years ago, I performed various searches on the corporation’s enterprise-wide document management repositories and downloaded the responsive files, then used DOS to generate control listings of each responsive set for verification and statistical analysis. Despite the fact that MS-DOS is 34 years old, it can still be useful in discovery.

Thanks, Amy, for the terrific “fast tip”!

So, what do you think? Do you use DOS to generate file listings for discovery, or any other purposes? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Another Instance Where Word is Not So Smart – eDiscovery Best Practices

Way back within the first couple of months after this blog was launched, we discussed those stupid “smart quotes” in Microsoft® Word where Word, by default, automatically changes straight quotation marks ( ‘ or ” ) to curly quotes as you type.  There’s another way where Word isn’t so smart, unless you know the workaround, which I just learned this week.

A couple of days ago, an unusual error was reported by one of the users of our review platform, OnDemand®.  She was putting text into a field in her database and when she went back to that same database record, the text was altered a bit, to say the least.  Here is what she was seeing (I’ll substitute a common typing sentence for her client proprietary text):

<span style=”font-size:11.0pt;line-height:115%; font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA”>The quick brown fox jumped over the&nbsp; <b><span style=”color:red”>lazy dog.</span></b></span>

What a mess!  Did you spot the sentence “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” in there?  Wasn’t easy, was it?  Important text was bolded in red, so I simulated that by putting the last two words bolded in red as well.

It turns out that she was copying text from a Word document and pasting it into the Web form for the database field.  It would look fine when she pasted it, but when she exited the database and logged back in (and returned to the specific record where she entered the text), the web form displayed all of the formatting that went with the text that she had copied.  As often as people copy text from Word documents, I’m surprised the issue hasn’t come up before.

What to do?  Copying the text to a plain text editor (like Notepad or Textpad) first would work as it would strip all of the formatting from the text.  Copying the text from the text editor and then pasting it into the field gives you the text without the formatting.  It’s a two-step process that I’ve used for years to copy text out of Word sans the formatting.

However, I learned a one-step approach from one of our OnDemand developers that I didn’t know about before.  Instead of using Ctrl+V to paste text (after using Ctrl+C to copy it to the clipboard), use Ctrl+Shift+V to paste the text.  You’ll get the pasted text without formatting and avoid the mess you see above.  Thanks, Chris Maden!

So, what do you think? Do you have issues copying text from Word files?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Word’s Stupid “Smart Quotes” – Best of eDiscovery Best Practices

Even those of us at eDiscoveryDaily have to take an occasional vacation day; however, instead of “going dark” for today, we thought we would republish a post from the early days of the blog (when we didn’t have many readers yet).  So, chances are, you haven’t seen this post yet!  Enjoy!

I have run into this issue more times than I can count.

A client sends me a list of search terms that they want to use to cull a set of data for review in a Microsoft® Word document.  I copy the terms into the search tool and then, all hell breaks loose!!  Either:

The search indicates there is a syntax error

OR

The search returns some obviously odd results

And, then, I remember…

It’s those stupid Word “smart quotes”.  Starting with Office 2003, Microsoft Word, by default, automatically changes straight quotation marks ( ‘ or ” ) to curly quotes as you type. This is fine for display of a document in Word, but when you copy that text to a format that doesn’t support the smart quotes (such as HTML or a plain text editor), the quotes will show up as garbage characters because they are not supported ASCII characters.  So:

“smart quotes”

will look like this…

âsmart quotesâ

As you can imagine, that doesn’t look so “smart” when you feed it into a search tool and you get odd results (if the search even runs).  So, you’ll need to address those to make sure that the quotes are handled correctly when searching for phrases with your search tool.

To disable the automatic changing of quotes to Microsoft Word smart quotes: Click the Microsoft Office icon button at the top left of Word, and then click the Word Options button to open options for Word.  Click Proofing along the side of the pop-up window, then click AutoCorrect Options.  Click the AutoFormat tab and uncheck the Replace “Smart Quotes” with “Smart Quotes” check box.  Then, click OK.

Often, however, the file you’ve received already has smart quotes in it.  If you’re going to use the terms in that file, you’ll need to copy them to a text editor first – (e.g., Notepad or Wordpad – if Wordpad is in plain text document mode) should be fine.  Highlight the beginning quote and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl+C), then Ctrl+H to open up the Find and Replace dialog, put your cursor in the Find box and press Ctrl+V to paste it in.  Type the “ character on the keyboard into the Replace box, then press Replace All to replace all beginning smart quotes with straight ones.  Repeat the process for the ending smart quotes.  You’ll also have to do this if you have any single quotes, double-hyphens, fraction characters (e.g., Word converts “1/2” to “½”) that impact your terms.

So, what do you think?  Have you ever run into issues with Word smart quotes or other auto formatting options?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

eDiscovery Tips: Word’s Stupid “Smart Quotes”

I have run into this issue more times than I can count.

A client sends me a list of search terms that they want to use to cull a set of data for review in a Microsoft® Word document.  I copy the terms into the search tool and then, all hell breaks loose!!  Either:

The search indicates there is a syntax error

OR

The search returns some obviously odd results

And, then, I remember…

It’s those stupid Word “smart quotes”.  Starting with Office 2003, Microsoft Word, by default, automatically changes straight quotation marks ( ‘ or ” ) to curly quotes as you type. This is fine for display of a document in Word, but when you copy that text to a format that doesn’t support the smart quotes (such as HTML or a plain text editor), the quotes will show up as garbage characters because they are not supported ASCII characters.  So:

“smart quotes” aren’t very smart

will look like this…

âsmart quotesâ arenât very smart

As you can imagine, that doesn’t look so “smart” when you feed it into a search tool and you get odd results (if the search even runs).  So, you’ll need to address those to make sure that the quotes are handled correctly when searching for phrases with your search tool.

To disable the automatic changing of quotes to Microsoft Word smart quotes: For Office 2007, click the Microsoft Office icon button at the top left of Word, and then click the Word Options button to open options for Word.  Click Proofing along the side of the pop-up window, then click AutoCorrect Options.  Click the AutoFormat tab and uncheck the Replace “Smart Quotes” with “Smart Quotes” check box.  Then, click OK.

To replace Microsoft Word smart quotes already in a file: Often, however, the file you’ve received already has smart quotes in it.  If you’re going to use the terms in that file, you’ll need to copy them to a text editor first – Notepad or Wordpad (if Wordpad is in plain text document mode) should be fine.  Highlight the beginning quote and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl+C), then Ctrl+H to open up the Find and Replace dialog, put your cursor in the Find box and press Ctrl+V to paste it in.  Type the “ character on the keyboard into the Replace box, then press Replace All to replace all beginning smart quotes with straight ones.  Repeat the process for the ending smart quotes.  You’ll also have to do this if you have any single quotes, double-hyphens, fraction characters (e.g., Word converts “1/2” to “½”), etc. that impact your terms.

So, what do you think?  Have you ever run into issues with Word smart quotes or other Word auto formatting options?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

From all of us at Trial Solutions…Have a Happy Thanksgiving!!