Documentation

Affidavit Bundler was designed to intelligently automate the mundane, onerous, and error prone clerical tasks of assembling large and unwieldy affidavits.

Before you start

You will need:

Exhibits: Each exhibit you want to feature in your affidavit as a PDF in a folder.

Affidavit body: An optional affidavit body that will precede your exhibits. You can use either a PDF or DOCX file. If you don't provide one, only the exhibits are bundled.

Licence key: A license key is not required to try the software. Every feature works out of the box already, except generated pages embed a watermark. To enter a license key, do so under Help → Register.

The workflow at a glance

1. Add your affidavit body and exhibits.
2. Put them in the order you want them.
3. Fill in the commissioning details on the General tab.
4. Choose where to save the result.
5. Press Bundle. That's it.

Everything else is optional refinement.

Trying the worked example

A complete worked example ships with the software. It is the quickest way to see a finished affidavit before committing any of your own files to one.

Where to find it

Windows: In an Example folder inside the installation directory. It is included in a full install. If you chose a custom install instead, it is the 'Example affidavit files' component.

macOS: On the disk image, beside the application, rather than inside the application bundle. Copy the Example folder somewhere you can write to, such as your Desktop or Documents, before opening it. The disk image is read only, and you will eject it once the application is installed.

Ubuntu: Not included in the package.

Opening it

The first time you use File → Open Session, the dialog opens in the example folder, since it is the one session the application knows is present. Choose Affidavit.affb. On a platform where the example is not installed, the dialog opens on your desktop instead.

What it contains

None of the exhibit files are named 'Exhibit A something.pdf', so their labels come purely from their order in the list. Reordering a row and watching the labels follow it is the fastest way to understand how labelling works.

The session also arrives with its commissioning details filled in, pinpoint hyperlinks and pagination enabled, bookmarks organised into 'Statements' and 'Exhibits', and lossy compression already selected. You are not obliged to keep any of it.

Bundling it

Check the Save to field on the General tab first. The example was saved on somebody else's computer, so if the location it names does not exist on yours, the application quietly substitutes your desktop rather than failing at the end of a long run.

Then press Bundle. In the finished PDF, look for:

• A cover sheet before each exhibit, carrying the commissioning stamp.
• Two cover sheets with no exhibit behind them, for the USB stick and the video.
• A bookmark index down the side, grouped under 'Statements' and 'Exhibits'.
• Pinpoint hyperlinks in the body: every reference to an exhibit is a link that jumps to it.
• A page number in the top right of every page, running continuously from the body through to the last exhibit.

What to try next

The example is a safe place to experiment, since nothing in it is yours and you can always reopen it with File → Revert. Reorder a few exhibits and watch the labels reassign. Convert one to a placeholder with Exhibits → Convert to placeholder. Change Image quality on the Compression tab, turn on Preview compression, and compare a photograph at one setting against another.

Your first bundle, step by step

1. Add your exhibits

Use Add beneath the exhibit list, or the Exhibits → Add menu:

• From Folder adds every PDF in a folder at once.
• From File adds particular files you pick.
• Placeholder adds an exhibit that has no file — see Placeholders below.

Note that if your exhibits already have file names like 'Exhibit C something.pdf', then these will automatically be added in sorted (alphabetical) order.

2. Put them in order

The exhibit list is the table located in the bottom left of the application window. It has three columns:

Note that the File Name refers only to the file and not the complete path to the exhibit. You can also edit an exhibit's File Name cell. Doing so renames the actual file on disk, so use it deliberately.

Drag rows up and down to reorder them. Labels are assigned by position, so the exhibit at the top becomes Exhibit A, the next Exhibit B, and so on. You never need to manually set the ordinal of an exhibit. The application will do this for you based on their order.

Tools → Sort → Alphabetically sorts the exhibit list by file name.

What the colours mean

Each row's exhibit label is coloured to tell you its state at a glance:

Green and blue need nothing from you. Amber usually means the file was produced by software that bends the PDF specification a little; it will still bundle, and the note is there so nothing surprises you later. Red means the exhibit is damaged, password protected, or cannot be read at all, and the bundle will not be right until you deal with it.

For amber and red alike, select the exhibit and open the Properties tab, which says exactly what was found.

3. Fill in the commissioning details

Open the General tab and complete:

• Affidavit body: This is the document that precedes your exhibits. It can be in either PDF or DOCX format. It is optional. If none is provided, only the exhibits will be bundled.
• Deponent: The name of the deponent swearing or affirming the affidavit.
• Oath: Select the modality that the oath will be administered to the deponent.
• City: The location of the deponent when the affidavit is commissioned.
• Commissioned on: Date the affidavit is commissioned. This appears on every exhibit stamp.
• Jurisdiction: Jurisdiction of the commissioner. This appears on each exhibit cover sheet's stamp. There is deliberately no default, so you must choose one.
• Save to: Wherever you would like the finished PDF saved.

Two conveniences sit beneath:

• Prompt before overwriting: If a file already exists at the save location, the user will be warned before overwriting it.
• Open after saving: Opens the saved PDF when it is ready, or the folder holding its parts if you requested that it be split.

4. Press Bundle

The Bundle button is at the bottom left, and F9 does the same thing. Progress appears along the bottom of the window, with a Stop button beside it if you need to abandon any process in progress.

The main window

The application window has three areas:

Exhibit list: Occupies the bottom left. Selecting an exhibit previews it in the pane to its right. You can also optionally select multiple exhibits and perform certain operations on them together.

Settings tabs: There are various user configurable settings in the 'General', 'Options', 'Compression', and 'Splitting' tabs. They control how your bundle is produced.

The 'Statistics' tab shows a running tally of what you are about to produce. This includes the number of exhibits, the exhibit pages, those pages including their cover sheets, and the total page count of the finished document.

Preview

Shows the currently selected exhibit as it will appear, without its cover sheet. Scroll, use the arrow buttons, or type a page number in the box to jump straight to a page. Use the Preview to verify an exhibit is what you thought it was.

Properties

Shows the selected exhibit's page count and whether it can be read from disk, and lets you switch it between:

• File: An ordinary exhibit backed by a PDF.
• Placeholder: Only a cover sheet will generated, but not an exhibit itself.

The settings tabs in detail

Options

E-signature hints: Pre-places signing boxes that platforms such as Dropbox Sign, Acrobat Sign and DocuSign detect automatically, so nobody has to drag fields into position by hand. Exhibit cover sheets and body footers also marks each body page footer for initials, except the jurat, which may be useful for virtual commissioning.

Label exhibits: Chooses between letters (A, B, C…) and numbers (1, 2, 3…) as ordinals for exhibits.

First exhibit: The label given to the first exhibit, with the rest following on from it. Counting normally starts at A, or at 1 when exhibits are numbered. But sometimes a supplementary affidavit might continue with the previous ordinal scheme. In that case, if your first affidavit ended at Exhibit E, set this to F and the labelling carries on rather than starting fresh. The counter reads in whichever scheme Label exhibits is set to, and changing that scheme keeps your place, so F becomes 6 rather than resetting.

Bookmarks target: Decides whether clicking on an exhibit in the PDF's index or in a pinpoint citation in the body should jump to the first page of the exhibit or to its cover sheet.

Organize bookmarks into Statements and Exhibits: Groups the index for the affidavit body, if present, under a 'Statements' heading, and with the exhibits under an 'Exhibits' heading.

Pinpoint hyperlink exhibits: When enabled, automatically searches the affidavit body and creates pinpoint hyperlinks from every exhibit reference to the actual exhibit itself.

Cross-reference validation: Looks for orphaned exhibits by comparing what your affidavit body cites against what you actually bundled. It runs when you press Check or Bundle, and is only available if an affidavit body was provided, since there is nothing to read otherwise. An exhibit that is bundled but never cited in the body is flagged amber in the table, with the reason on its Properties tab. Conversely, an exhibit that is cited in the body but unbundled raises a message naming it. Neither stops a bundle from being produced since an uncited exhibit might have been intentional.

Note that this needs an affidavit body with selectable text. A body that is itself a scan without an OCR layer has no text to read, and the application says so rather than reporting every exhibit as uncited.

Default view: When a user first opens your generated document, setting this provides a hint to their rendering software of what to open on the sidebar. Usually showing the bookmark index is preferred.

Add global pagination: Stamps a page number in the top right corner of every page, numbered continuously across the body and all exhibits.

Page count begins at: Optionally the number paginated on the first page that offsets all subsequent.

Resize oversized pages: Scales anything larger than twice letter size, such as a full web page capture, down to letter width and splits it across letter-sized pages. Signing platforms and printers mishandle oversized pages, so this is usually worth leaving on. Oversized exhibits should not lose quality.

Check the resulting PDF: Performs various diagnostics on the finished file for structural errors the way some court filing systems will. If there are any problems detected, the software will inform you.

Scrub metadata: Strips the metadata each exhibit arrived with, such as the name of whoever wrote it, the software that produced it, and its editing history.

Save in PDF/A format: Some registries require PDFs in PDF/A format for long term archival purposes and maximum compatibility, otherwise known as ISO 19005. This is a best-effort conversion to PDF/A-2b format. The application will write the identification and colour information the standard requires, but it cannot embed a font that the author of an exhibit never embedded themselves. When that happens, you will be told which exhibits are responsible, the document will written regardless, and it will still open and print normally. Re-exporting those exhibits with fonts embedded is the fix.

Compression

File compression: Three different levels of compression are available. These are:

Image quality: Applies to lossy compression only. A higher value keeps more detail while lower produces a smaller file. Users are suggested to start experimenting at '60'.

Preview compression: Shows the selected exhibit in the 'Preview' pane as it would look at the quality you have chosen, so you can judge the trade-off before committing to it.

Splitting

Some filing systems cap upload size. Most e-signing online platforms do the same. It is rare to find one that allows greater than 40 MB in size. Split the PDF into parts splits the resulting PDF into consecutive separate PDFs, each under the size you set.

• Maximum part size: The maximum file size a single component can be. Dropbox Sign, as an example allows a maximum of 40 MB.
• Part names: Chooses between Part X of Y and Pages N to M naming schemes for the generated PDF.
• Smart split: Avoids splitting the document part way through an exhibit and instead tries to split them.

Placeholders

Some exhibits cannot be filed as a PDF. The examples might be a physical object, such as a USB stick. Or something non-physical, like a video or an audio recording. For these exhibits, you might still need a cover sheet even if the exhibits themselves will be filed by some other means. A placeholder generates the cover sheet for such an exhibit, correctly labelled and stamped, with no document behind it.

Add one with Exhibits → Add → Placeholder, or convert an existing exhibit with Exhibits → Convert to placeholder, which keeps the exhibit and its cover sheet but stops including the file itself.

Checking your work

Check: Verifies that every exhibit can still be found on disk and that none are duplicates. An exhibit that has been moved, renamed or deleted since you added it is flagged, and Edit → Select → Missing selects every such row so you can deal with them together.

Remove: Clears all exhibits, the selected ones, or only the missing ones, depending on which type was selected.

Replace: Points an existing exhibit at a different file, keeping its position and label.

Sessions

All of your work, which is the exhibit list, its order, and every setting, can be saved and reloaded later.

• File → Save Session and Save Session As write a .affb file.
• File → Open Session reopens one, and Recent Sessions lists the last few.
• File → Revert (F5) discards unsaved changes and reloads from disk.

Session files are portable. One saved on Windows is interchangeable with macOS or Ubuntu.

Menu reference

File: New, Open, Save, Save As, Revert, Recent Sessions, Close, Bundle (F9), Quit.

Edit: Select (All, Missing, None, Invert), Affidavit body.

Edit → Affidavit body opens the affidavit body in whatever your desktop uses for Word documents. It is available only when the body is a .docx, since a PDF is not something you normally edit. It is most useful straight after a cross-reference warning, when you want to go and fix the orphaned citation it complained about.

Exhibits: Add (From Folder, From File, Placeholder), Check, Insert (Above or Below the selected row), Remove (All, Selected, Missing), Replace, Convert to placeholder.

Tools → Sort: Alphabetically.

Help: Product Website, News, Check for Update, Documentation (F1), Contact Support, Feedback, Register, View EULA, About.

Getting help

Help → Contact Support and Help → Feedback reach the vendor directly from within the application.

Updates

Help → Check for Update tells you whether a newer version of the application is available for your platform. This happens automatically each time you start the application.