Manage headings in the Document Index

Add, rename, move, sort, indent, and delete headings in the Document Index, or generate them automatically from your folder structure.

Wherever these steps say to open a heading's ⋮ menu, you can also right-click the heading row to open the same menu.

Generate headings from folders

In the Document Index, if your documents are organised into folders:

1. Open the tab and click in the toolbar.
2. Hover over Generate index headings to open the submenu.
3. Choose — "Generates headings per uploaded folder".

Generating folder headings cannot be undone. Generating discards the current headings, including any you have created or edited by hand:

• The first time you generate headings on an index, BriefTech asks you to confirm — "This will delete all your current manually created/edited headings and cannot be undone".
• After headings have been generated once, generating again replaces them without a prompt.
• Undo in the Document Index covers changes you make to the index rows, not heading generation, so hand-made headings cannot be brought back once they have been replaced.

Switch to folder headings before you invest in hand-made ones.

BriefTech replaces the current headings with a heading for each folder, grouping documents under the heading that matches their upload folder — so you don't add headings one by one.

If your folders contain sub-folders, the generated headings mirror that nesting — a sub-folder becomes a heading nested under its parent.

To remove the generated headings and return to a flat list, repeat the steps above and choose . The same submenu also offers , which creates one heading per assigned document category instead of per folder — see Document Index presets for all three options.

Note: "Group by folder" uses the folder each document was uploaded into. If you have not organised your documents into folders, or all documents are at the matter root, no headings are generated.

See Folders, labels, and collections for more on how folders work.

Add a heading

In the Document Index.

1. Hover over the document row where you want the heading to start — an Add heading: area appears.
2. Click the chip to open the Add Heading dialog.
3. Enter the Heading Title and click (Save is disabled until you enter a title). The heading is inserted above that row; use the ⋮ menu or the drag handle to move it afterwards.

Rename a heading

In the Document Index.

1. Double-click the heading text (or hover the heading row, click the ⋮ menu, and choose Edit heading) to open the Edit Heading dialog.
2. Update the title and save.

Move a heading up or down

In the Document Index.

1. Hover over the heading row.
2. Click the ⋮ menu.
3. Choose or .

The heading moves one row at a time, swapping places with whatever sits immediately above or below it — a document or another heading. The documents themselves stay put, so each step simply changes which section the document the heading steps past belongs to.

To move a heading a long distance, drag it by its handle (⠿) instead — this drops the heading at the new position in a single action. Only the heading moves; the documents stay where they are, so dragging a heading changes which documents fall beneath it and beneath the section it leaves behind.

Sort documents under a heading

To sort the documents under a heading, see Sort documents in the Document Index.

Indent a heading

In the Document Index.

1. Hover over the heading row.
2. Click the ⋮ menu.
3. Choose to show the heading one indent level deeper, or to bring it back up.

Indenting changes the heading's own display level only — it doesn't attach the heading to the one above it. Indenting is only available when Senior Volumes mode is not enabled.

Enable or disable Senior Volumes

To turn Senior Volumes on or off, and for what the mode does, see Split a bundle into volumes.

While Senior Volumes is on:

• The Add heading: strip becomes Add: with two chips — and — so you can add a volume divider or an ordinary heading.
• Each volume-heading row has its own ⋮ menu with and .
• Edit volume opens a volume-label template dialog (not a plain title field), and the delete item is relabelled Delete senior volume heading.
• Deleting the first volume heading turns Senior Volumes off.

Delete a heading

In the Document Index.

1. Hover over the heading row.
2. Click the ⋮ menu.
3. Choose Delete heading, then confirm.

Documents that were under the deleted heading remain in the index and move up to the section above (or to the root level if it was the first heading). Any nested sub-headings under it are kept too — they aren't deleted, they just move up with the documents.

To delete several headings at once, tick the checkbox on each heading row and choose the delete action in the bulk-action strip that appears — it reads Delete heading for one selected, or Delete N headings for several. As with a single delete, the documents under each removed heading stay in the index and move up to the section above.

Note: if some heading rows are ticked and you use the ⋮ menu's Delete heading on one of the ticked headings, BriefTech deletes all the ticked headings, not just that one. Clear the checkboxes first if you mean to delete a single heading.

What you've built

You now have a Document Index divided into labelled sections: each heading groups the documents beneath it and appears as a section title in the table of contents and the generated bundle.

Related

From Document Index to court bundle

How the index and the bundle share one source of truth.

Reorder documents and add structure

Drag documents to reorder them in the Document Index, including moving them between sections and dragging multiple rows at once.

Document Index presets

The built-in Document Index presets and what each configures.

Prepare a List of Documents for Disclosure

A guided, end-to-end walkthrough — take a set of documents from upload to a finished disclosure package: a ZIP archive containing a Word index, an Excel index, and every document renamed by serial number, date, and description.

Add or edit sub-index entries

Add, edit, or remove the sub-index entries that appear beneath a document in the Document Index.