Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Law Technology Blogs -> Acrobat for Legal Professionals

Law Technology

: Acrobat for Legal Professionals

Can I change the number of digits when I Bates Number?

By Rick Borstein

Acrobat 8 introduced Bates Numbering and and additional features and performance enhancements were made in Acrobat 9 Pro.

See my Bates Numbering Movie! My Acrobat Training Movie Page has over 30 how-to movies such as the Bates Numbering Movie.

Last week, I got this e-mail message from a paralegal:

I don't like Adobe's mandatory 6 digit bate stamp. Why did they do that? I like to bate stamp with just single digits. It is more simple that way.

You might be aware that the custom is to Bates stamp discovery documents using six digits including leading zeros. However, that might not meet the needs of everyone. Some folks like to use four digits and others, like my most recent emailer above, wanted to use just one.

You might assume that Acrobat requires you to use a minimum of six digits for Bates numbering.

In fact, if when you Bates stamp (Advanced—> Document Processing Bates Numbering—> Add . . . ) and insert a Bates stamp you cannot change the number of leading digits through the standard dialog:

Actually, let me take that back. You can try, but Acrobat will give you an error:

Fortunately, there is an easy workaround that allows you to Bates Number with only one digit. Read on to learn how. Along the way, you will also learn all you need to use Bates Numbering in Acrobat..

Full post as published by Acrobat for Legal Professionals on June 11, 2009 (boomark / email).