Serial numbers and date formats
Serial numbering options, date format presets, and sort order for the Document Index.
Serial numbering
Both settings live in the S/No. column's Column Settings popup — hover the S/No. column heading and click the 
that appears at its right. Custom Initial and Initial Serial Number take effect the moment you change them (as does the Date Format Preset below). The popup's three buttons affect only the column's heading text, width and alignment:
Save applies those edits.
Close discards them.
Reset label clears the heading name field back to the default (which also only takes effect when you press Save).
Press Save before closing if you have renamed the column or changed its width or alignment.
Initial Serial Number
1
The number the first document is given; numbering increments by one from there. The field warns Must be at least 1 if you enter a lower number, but the warning is advisory — the value still applies, so entering 0 numbers the first document 0.
Custom Initial
None
An optional text prefix placed before each serial number (for example LOD or A).
When a document is split across volumes, every part keeps the document's single serial number and adds a suffix — (A), (B), and so on — so the next document's number is one higher, not one per part. The suffixes appear in the Preview view and in a generated court bundle.
Initial Serial Number applies to the Document Index and its Word and ZIP exports. A generated court bundle keeps this number in its table of contents, just as the index does, but always numbers its tabs and bookmarks from 1 whatever you set here. Custom Initial and the date-format preset do carry into the bundle.
Serial numbers in the Document Index are plain sequential numbers — 1, 2, 3, and so on. They are not zero-padded.
These settings are saved per collection. Custom Initial, Initial Serial Number and the Date Format Preset are stored against the collection you are working in, not the matter as a whole — each collection keeps its own. Switch to another collection and you will see that collection's settings, or the defaults if it has never had any set. Set them again in each collection where you want them.
Sub-index entries are numbered relative to their parent: an entry's serial is the parent's serial, a dash, and the entry's position — for example 3-1, 3-2. An undated sub-index entry shows a blank date cell rather than the word "Undated". Attachments are different: an attachment gets its own ordinary number in the sequence.
Date format presets
The document date is displayed using a Date Format Preset, chosen in the Date column's Column Settings popup — hover the Date column heading and click the that appears at its right. Each option is labelled by an example date, shown exactly as the app writes it (including the 2025 example year on the last two):
2026-01-01 (DEFAULT)
2026-01-01
2026/01/01
2026/01/01
2026/01/01 [time]
2026/01/01 14:30
01/01/2026
01/01/2026
01.01.2025
01.01.2026
01.01.2025 HH:mm
01.01.2026 14:30
The (DEFAULT) in the first option's name is part of the label the app prints, not a description of what you get before you choose. With no preset selected, the Document Index renders 01.01.2026 — and 01.2026 for a month-only date — which is the same output as the 01.01.2025 option. Select 2026-01-01 (DEFAULT) explicitly if you want ISO dates.
The two time options — 2026/01/01 [time] and 01.01.2025 HH:mm — add the time only to documents whose date carries one. A document with a date but no time renders without a time under every preset. A document's date is taken from its file name when one is found there, and only otherwise from the document's contents; a date read from a file name is a date only and never carries a time, so a document dated from its file name shows no time under either time preset.
Each preset sets the date, date-and-time, and month-only formats together, so you pick one option rather than configuring each case. You can clear the preset to return to 01.01.2026, the format an index uses before any preset is chosen. The preset governs the dates shown in the on-screen index, in all three of its exports — Word, Excel and the ZIP — and on the index pages of a generated court bundle. It does not reach exported file names, which use:
yyyy.MM.ddfor a full date2026.01for a month-only date2018.01.01-2018.12.31for a date rangeUndatedfor a document with no date
How other date values render:
Month-only date (no day): shows just the year-and-month part of your chosen format — for example
2026-01,2026/01, or01/2026.No date: shows as Undated.
Date range: shows as
start – end(for example2018-01-01 – 2018-12-31) and is sorted by its start date.
Sort order
The Document Index can be sorted by:
Date, File Name (default)
Document date, then file name.
Bundle part (for documents split across volumes).
File Name
File name.
Bundle part (for documents split across volumes).
Description
Document description.
File name.
Where undated documents sort:
Date, File Name: last, after all dated documents.
File Name or Description: placed by file name or description like any other document.
Attachments stay with their parent. Sorting never separates an attachment from the document it is attached to: whichever order you choose, each attachment stays immediately beneath its parent, and a parent's attachments are sorted among themselves by the same rule. So an attachment can appear out of date order relative to the documents around it — it is following its parent's position, not its own.
These labels appear when you sort a single section. The same three orders are offered under Sort all sections in the Apply preset toolbar menu, where they are labelled Date, Description, and Filename.
For how to run a sort — where each control is and what it covers — see Sort documents in the Document Index.
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