Today is World Backup Day — an annual reminder to backup all your critical data. You likely know how important it is to routinely back up all your devices; it’s a trusty way to mitigate risk, anticipate unexpected events and align your work and your organization’s continuity plan. However, as someone who’s worked with data collection for litigation for over a decade, I can tell you one thing with certainty: not all backups are equally useful.

Whether you're given a client’s computer to obtain forensic images or to collect records, it can be difficult to find the correct user data without getting mixed up in all the system files, programs and other data that isn't of value for your legal review. In today’s Tuesday Tip, I'm sharing the easiest way to find this user data, plus a few unusual places to look that also contain useful information.

You've probably been asked at some point, "What time zone should we use?" Maybe this was a question that came up for processing or perhaps it was when you were setting up your review case. Either way, why was it asked and how should you answer?

Load files are specifically formatted files that contain links to native documents, images and the OCR/Full Text of a document. As the name suggests, they are used to "load" documents processed in an eDiscovery tool to get the data into a review-able format.

Metadata is data about data. In a Word file, the document contains all of the data: words, put into paragraphs, displayed on pages. But, as we know, behind the scenes Word also keeps metadata about the document including the author’s name and the date it was created, modified and printed.

In today's Tuesday Tip, we'll be showing you how to collect, copy and move data without accidentally changing the hidden (and extremely important) details about the file. While most eDiscovery tools won’t capture unusual metadata, you can create your own custom fields in Word. These additional fields will allow you to keep track of information that may be useful or pertinent for future reference.

Keep reading to learn how to properly manage your files during the data collection process. 

Have you ever run a complex Boolean search and didn’t know why some documents were showing up in the results?

In a previous Tuesday’s Tip post, we explained what padded zeroes are and how to add them in Excel using apostrophes or by setting the format of the field. Today, we’re sharing an alternative way you can create padded zeros – this time by using a formula. Keep reading to see how you can do this in three easy steps, and (once you’ve got that down pat) how to combine all the steps into one single formula.