AutoPortfolio™ is a plug-in for Adobe® Acrobat® software. It is designed for extracting email data out of PDF Portfolios and into litigation support systems. The plug-in provides powerful functionalities for managing PDF Portfolios: converting portfolios into regular PDF files (all files are combined into one), extracting embedded files including file attachments, converting non-PDF attachments into PDF format, exporting metadata into Excel-ready and HTML formats, converting portfolios for use in litigation support systems such as Concordance and Summation, and deduplication of load files and PDF Portfolios. 

• You have an email folder (in Outlook or any other email application) that was exported into PDF Portfolio. Now you want to convert it into a single regular PDF with all attachments appended after corresponding emails  for storing, printing or searching.
• You have a PDF Portfolio and want to extract all files and attachments into separate files.
• You have a set of PDF documents that you want to prepare for importing into litigation support system (Concordance / Summation).
• You want to export metadata for a PDF Portfolio into a spreadsheet-ready file.
• You have a set of PDF files that you want to de-duplicate and create a Casemap load file.

Convert PDF Portfolios Into Regular PDF Documents

The plug-in provides the ability to convert the content of one or more PDF Portfolios into a single "flat" PDF document. All embedded files and corresponding file attachments are merged together to create a regular PDF file. The begining of each file is bookmarked (with additional child bookmarks pointing to file attachments). Non-PDF file attachments are optionally converted into PDF format. Attachments are merged at the end of the parent document.

The plug-in allows merging of regular PDF documents with a page-level file attachments. File attachments are optionally converted into PDF format and appended to the end of their parent document. The plug-in bookmarks the first page of each document and attachments.

The software provides sorting and filtering capabilities (see screenshot below) based on embedded files metadata. For example, embedded files from a PDF Portfolio that contains emails can be sorted based on the date received (or any other metadata field such as "From", "To", "Subject" and etc.) and then merged into a single output file producing a regular PDF with all emails organized in chronological order.

Processing of Multiple Files

The plug-in provides an option for creating either a single output document (or a set of files depending on operation) for one or more input PDF portfolios or creating a separate output for each input portfolio (all output files are placed into automatically created sub-folders). The second option gives a powerful ability to batch process a large number of input PDF portfolios (email archives for example) into separate output documents. Each email archive is converted into a separate PDF file and placed into a separate folder.

Supported File Formats

The plug-in uses existing file conversion filters installed in your copy of Adobe Acrobat to convert non-PDF files into a PDF format. If Adobe Acrobat can create a PDF file from a certain file format, then the plug-in will be able to convert it as well. Some file formats require presence of corresponding software products on the same computer. For example, you need Microsoft Office Word installed on your computer in order to convert Microsoft Word documents (*.doc) into PDF format.

Select Portfolio Items By Date

The plug-in provides a simple interface for selecting portfolio items based on a date range. This is a very usefull operation for processing large email archives. Use this method to process/extract/convert all emails received between two dates.

Selecting Portfolio Items By Search

The plug-in provides a powerful "select by search" method for selecting only those documents from a PDF Portfolio that contain a specific text or pattern. Use this feature to process only files that have a certain word(s) in a specific metadata field(s). For example, select only emails from "John Adams" or with "QA Problems" in a subject line.

Processing ZIP file attachments

The plug-in optionally extracts ZIP file attachments and converts all contained files into PDF. This capability makes handling ZIP file attachments completely transparent.

Processing MSG file attachments

The plug-in extracts content of MSG file attachments and converts them into PDF format on individual basis (similar to processing of ZIP archives). The MSG format is used by Microsoft Outlook email program to save email messages as separate files.

Extract Embedded Files

Use this software to extract all embedded files (including file attachments) from one or more PDF Portfolios. Non-PDF file attachments are optionally converted into PDF format. The plug-in automatically creates a Casemap load file (text file that lists all extracted files) based on the user-defined sorting order. Sorting and filtering capabilities allow the export of all or only a few selected files based on any existing metadata field. The plug-in can process regular PDF files with embedded files as well as PDF Portfolios (or PDF Packages). The HTML (with hyperlinks to extracted files) and CSV report files are generated automatically and include the following metadata: file name, description, size in bytes, creation and modification date/time, and MD5 checksum.

Extract Portofilo Metadata

The plug-in allows the export of embedded file metadata for many files at once without extracting any embedded content. The software supports two formats that can be easily imported into any spreadsheet application: text (CSV) and MS Excel XML files. Metadata includes any standard or custom fields such as file name, description, size in bytes, MD5 checksum, creation and modification date/time. If a PDF portfolio was created by Microsoft Outlook ("Convert To Adobe PDF" menu) email application, then each file might have the following metadata fields (specific to email): "Subject", "From", "To", "Cc", "Attachments", "Folder", "Received", "Importance", "Sensitivity" and etc.

Convert PDF Portfolios For Litigation Support Systems (Concordance and Summation)

Convert one or more PDF Portfolios for loading into litigation support systems such as Concordance and Summation. This operation outputs a set of TIFF, Text and PDF files, one output file for each PDF page. All interactive form elements such as buttons, fields, as well as annotations will be automatically flattened before converting to output text, image and PDF files. The plug-in creates separate Summation (DII) and Casemap load files for each output format. 

Deduplicate Load Files and PDF Portfolios

The plug-in provides advanced functionality for checking load files (text files that list paths to other files) and PDF Portfolios for duplicate files. The software uses combination of a file size, MD5 hash and CRC32 checksum to detect files that are identical, but may have different file names or be stored in different locations. Use this functionality to deduplicate one or more existing load files and create new load files from combination of multiple load and regular files.

Sorting and Filtering

Record sorting capability allows user to select a custom order of the embedded files while converting from Portfolio into PDF and other file formats. The plug-in allows selecting only a subset of the embedded files based on either a manual selection or a search query.

Skipping Duplicate Attachments

The plug-in automatically skips duplicate attachments that are present within a single PDF document. This feature comes handy when processing PDF Portfolios created by Adobe PDF Maker from Lotus Notes email. Every email attachment in such portfolios appears to be included twice: once in the header of the email and once in the body. Skipping such files speeds up processing and removes unnecessary duplicates in the output.

Reporting

The plug-in automatically generates processing reports in HTML and spreadhseet-ready CSV file formats. Processing report contains detailed information about each input portfolio, lists processed portfolio sub-documents and attachments, provides files statistics and MD5 checksums. 

All functionality of the plug-in is available from "Plug-ins > AutoPortfolio Plug-in..." menu that software adds to Adobe Acrobat.

News Articles

Read a TechnoLaywer NewsWire™ article by Neil J. Squillante: "Take a load off your email discovery chores" (download a printer-ready PDF version).

About TechnoLawyer NewsWire™:

TechnoLawyer NewsWire is a weekly newsletter that covers new products and services for law firms and legal departments. Thanks to an innovative structure, it serves lawyers and law office administrators who want a quick overview as well as those who want an in-depth analysis.

Download and evaluate a 30-days fully featured trial version of the plug-in. Trial version adds a "DEMO" watermark to each page of all output documents.

Platforms:

 Microsoft® Windows Vista/XP/2003/2000/Windows 7.

Software:

Full version of Adobe® Acrobat® Professional software is required (versions 7, 8, 9, 10);This software will not work with free Adobe Acrobat® Reader®.
(Adobe Acrobat Product Comparison Chart).

PAD File