Previewing documents
The document preview toolbar in BriefTech — moving through pages, zooming, rotating, panning, selecting an area, and downloading the original file.
Whenever you open a document in BriefTech — from the Files or Review tabs, or from the Document Index — it opens in the built-in preview with a toolbar across the top. This page lists what each control does.
On a narrow preview pane, everything after the page controls collapses into a More controls menu (
) to save space — the controls are the same, just tucked away.
Opening a large document
To stay responsive, BriefTech does not load a large document into the preview automatically. When you open a file of about 10.5 MB or larger — the size BriefTech shows in the Size column — the pane shows a still image of its first page instead of the document itself. Move the pointer over the preview and it dims, showing an eye icon and Click to preview; click anywhere on it to load the document. Smaller documents load on their own.
While the document loads, a thin progress bar runs across the top of the preview. If the pointer is still over the preview you also see a spinner and Loading…; move away and the progress bar is the only sign, which is normal.
Until the document loads, a cut-down toolbar sits above the preview:
It shows only the page, zoom, rotate and mode controls, all greyed out apart from the next-page button — click that to load the document and open it at the next page.
On a single-page document the next-page button is greyed out too, so nothing on that toolbar is usable.
The Download original button and the More controls menu are not on this cut-down toolbar at all.
Two things skip the wait whatever the file's size:
A document BriefTech has no stored first-page image for. There is nothing to show in place of the pages, so it loads directly.
The two sub-index actions that already name a page to look at — the source document shown beside the entry table in the Edit Subindex dialog, and the magnifier icon on a sub-index row, whose tooltip reads Preview at page followed by the page number (for example Preview at page 12). See Add or edit sub-index entries.
Move through the pages
Previous page
Go to the previous page. Greyed out on the first page.
Page box — "of N"
Shows the current page and the total number of pages. Type a page number and press Enter to jump straight to it. A number outside the document's page range is ignored and the box goes back to the current page.
Next page
Go to the next page. Greyed out on the last page.
You can also turn pages with the Left and Right arrow keys — see Keyboard shortcuts.
Zoom and rotate
Zoom out
Make the page smaller, down to 50%. The current zoom level is shown next to it. Greyed out once the page is as small as it goes.
Zoom in
Make the page larger, up to 300%. Greyed out once the page is as large as it goes.
Rotate clockwise
Turn the document 90° clockwise — useful for one that was scanned sideways. The rotation applies to every page and stays as you move through the document.
Pan and select an area
Hand mode
Turn on to drag the page around when it is zoomed in. Click it again to turn it off.
Selection mode
Turn on to drag a box around part of the page. Finish the drag and BriefTech opens a snippet dialog; add a note (required) and save, and the snippet is saved to the matter as a fact. Drag a box smaller than about 20 pixels in either direction and BriefTech tells you the selection is too small instead. Click the button again to turn Selection mode off.
By default — with neither Hand mode nor Selection mode turned on — you can select and copy text straight from the page. Turning on Hand mode or Selection mode switches out of text selection; clicking the button again returns to it. While a mode is on you can tell which: in the toolbar its button turns solid blue and its tooltip reads Exit Hand Mode or Exit Selection Mode; in the More controls menu, its entry turns blue and reads the same.
Download the original
Download original
Download the document's original uploaded file, in the format it was uploaded in.
This is the same quick download covered in Download the original or individual files — use that page's export flow when you want several files at once.
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