Good afternoon, Brian. I am a forensic accountant with a large CPA firm. I have been given IDEA as a tool for use in an investigation that involves 10s of thousands of documents. This matter will be going to court, and I would like to be able to pull various PDF documents up on a screen as necessary in the evidence phase. Is IDEA able to embed PDF files so that they can be accessed in their original condition and called up on the screen? If not, what complementary application would be required to accomplish this? My compliments on the quality of your site. Thanks, and best regards, Bryan
BMFlemingCPA
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Joined: 09/06/2018 - 15:25
Hi Bryan and welcome to the site.
No you can't embed PDF files with IDEA but I might have come up with a work around for you. It is not working perfectly so I suggest if you want to try it you test it out first and make sure that it is working for you before you take this to court.
First what you will need is the pdf document name located in a cell within IDEA such as this:
You then create an action field and associate the action field with the attached script that I have adapted from the ie.iss script. So what happens is when you click on the name of the pdf file it should open. Now I have been having problems with certain types of pdfs that I created from word or excel, adobe is giving me an error. Also when I tried storing the files under the project I was also getting an error so I just created a folder under the c drive called data and it seems to work from there but this is something you will have to test out on your machine.
Ok, so now you define the action field by clicking on any cell within the field that contains the pdf names:
In the Define Action Field dialog select Run an IDEAScript and find the script that I have attached.
Click on the first parameter input and select the name of the field that holds your pdf file names.
Once this is done click on ok and now your data will be blue underlined. Now if everything works you should be able to click any of the documents and it should open.
Like I said previously I was having a few problems and it is probably my not used to using the shell and doing something wrong there. Maybe someone else has more experience with the shell on the site or maybe you have a programmer in your organization that could look at it.
Good luck on your court case.
Brian
While I am a great proponent and user of IDEA, for quick references and links to documents such as Excel Workbooks, Worksheets and PDF documents, I still find Excel (with an Index Worksheet) or Word with hyperlinks more practical.
Many of my IDEA analysis are exported to Excel format as opposing attorneys do not have IDEA but do have Excel.
When I write a report for attorneys, they are usually in Word format with hyperlinks to particular cell references within Excel worksheets in an Excel Workbook.
nder. I appreciate the commentary. This may be faster as well.
Good morning Brian, and thank you for your excellent answer to my query. I am working in an engagement management environment created internally, which is intended to function much like Caseware, though it is by no means as smooth. When I engaged the IT department on the use of IDEA I got a lot of pushback on using it in a server environment. For whatever reason, they have suggested that I create an external project and set it up to be shared. In that I work collaboratively with other offices on large projects I am a little concerned as to the possibility of corruption occuring as a result of a save error or something along those lines. I do see commentary in your Limitations post related to the possibility of corruption when transferring files within the Windows Explorer environment. And I further see commentary to the effect that files should be copied, etc., using the File Explorer in IDEA. Is my concern founded?
IDEA won't damage the files, what the script is doing is just having windows open the file, so it is similar to double clicking on the file when you click the link in IDEA.
If you are concerned about your IDEA set-up I would recommend you contact your distributor to talk to. They have more knowledge then I do on how IDEA works in the different environments and should be able to help you make the best decisions.