Redact External Markups

Some documents cannot receive markups using Redact and if you open a document like this in the Viewer, a notification displays. For documents that cannot have markups applied in Redact or are too large for the Viewer, we recommend using Redact External Markups.

After adding documents to the External Markups tab by selecting the Redact Document Warnings field, you can download each document, apply markups externally, and then re-upload them. Documents with external markups can then be included in native productions along with any other documents that are ready for production.

Example workflow

This workflow illustrates how External Markups can prevent reviewers from being disrupted while performing manual redactions using Redact in the Viewer.

1. The case team identifies a set of PDF and spreadsheet files that are too big to display in the Viewer.
2. A saved search that includes only these large document files is created.
3. Add the documents to the Redact External Markup tab by checking the Redact Document Warnings and Cannot be Redacted in Native Viewer field options. To learn more, see Adding documents to External Markups tab.
4. Reviewers are granted access to the Redact External Markups tab.
5. Reviewers select the markup set that they used to apply any redactions to the documents.
6. Reviewers download documents to apply markups to externally.
7. Markups are placed using your tool of choice such as Microsoft Excel or Adobe Acrobat. If you are applying markups using Excel, please note that applying a Fill Color over data does not safely redact that information. Instead, any data in the cells you wish to redact should be removed:
   1. Click on the cell you wish to redact.
   2. Press Delete on your keyboard.
   3. Right-click the cell and select Fill Color with Black selected.
8. The documents with external markups are re-uploaded to Relativity and ready for production.

File size considerations

To ensure high performance, there is a 4 GB file size limit for native files. Any native files that are 4 GB or above will not receive markups using Redact.

Adding documents to External Markups tab

Once you have identified documents that need to have markups applied externally and placed them in a saved search, do the following to add the documents to the External Markups tab:

1. Either edit an existing layout or create a new one and ensure that the layout includes the Redact Document Warnings field.
2. Navigate to the Documents tab and open the saved search that contains the documents that you wish to apply external markups to.
3. Select the documents you wish to add to the External Markups tab.
4. Select Edit in the mass operations toolbar.
   The Edit X Document Item(s) pop-up displays.
5. Select the layout that contains the Redact Document Warnings field that you created for step 1 from the drop-down menu in the upper-right.
6. Select Redact Document Warnings and then select Cannot be Redacted in Native Viewer.
7. Click Save.
   The selected documents are added to the External Markups tab.

Recommended uses of External Markups

The following are examples of situations where we recommend using External Markups instead of the normal Redact workflow:

File Type	Description
PDF	If a PDF file contains corrupted content, the PDF will not properly brand unless External Markups is used.
PDF	Large PDF files that are 1 GB or larger will potentially not brand correctly without using External Markups.
Spreadsheet	Macros in spreadsheet files can cause issues with burning in markups unless External Markups is used.
Spreadsheet	Documents containing an individual table of 7,500,000 cells or more are not supported for performance reasons. We recommend using External Markups to ensure markups are applied correctly.
Spreadsheet	A large spreadsheet that is either 4 GB or larger or it contains 1,000 columns or more can cause errors when applying markups. Files of this size typically experience reduced performance as well.
Spreadsheet	Redacting entire rows or columns may lead to different behavior in the Viewer versus you download to your workstation. It is expected that the redacted row will only display where there is text in the Viewer, but when you download the file, you will see text in each cell spanning the entire row or column. Before preparing documents for production, consider whether this behavior suits your needs and if not, you can use External Markups.
Spreadsheet	If columns are hidden in the original, spreadsheet document, there might be formatting issues during production. We recommend QC'ing spreadsheets with hidden content before production and if there are formatting issues, using External Markups instead.

External Markups tab columns

The following columns display in the External Markups tab:

Column Name	Description
Control Number	Displays the control number for each document. Click on the control number to open the document in the Native Viewer.
Branded File Download	Displays either the Download Partial Branding button or No markups to brand. Click on the Download Partial Branding button to download a file that includes all of the redactions that were successfully applied and branded before the job failed. You can download this file and apply redactions where the job left off.
Unbranded File Download	The drop-down menu may contain one or both of the following options: Download Original Native or Download Prepared Native. Download Original Native—Click on the drop-down menu and select this option to download the original file without any redactions or preparation. Download Prepared Native—Click on the drop-down menu and select this option to download the flattened native file which is prepared for redactions.
Externally Redacted	Displays Yes if the document has already had external markups applied or No if none have been applied.
External File Upload	Displays either the Upload button or the Replace Uploaded File button. A download button is also available if an external file was previously uploaded. Upload—Click to select a document file that you wish to upload to Relativity and apply external markups to. Replace Uploaded File—Click to select a document file that has external markups applied and upload it to replace the current file. Download—Click to download a copy of the document that has external markups already applied.