Supported file formats

How BriefTech handles common file formats — conversion to PDF, OCR, and indexing.

BriefTech does not restrict uploads to a fixed list of file types — almost any file can be uploaded.

A file BriefTech can't convert to a PDF has no text extracted, so it isn't searchable. It lands in the view instead (see Document processing and errors).

How common formats are handled

The table below summarises how BriefTech handles the most common formats, based on testing against a representative document set. The three support columns show what BriefTech does with each file:

• Converted to PDF — BriefTech creates a PDF rendition of the file for on-screen viewing and inclusion in court bundles.
• OCRed — optical character recognition reads text from scanned pages and images so it is searchable and available to AI features. BriefTech skips OCR outright for some file types, and a file with no PDF rendition never reaches it. For everything else, whether OCR runs is decided by the converted PDF rather than by the original format — so a Yes in this column doesn't guarantee it runs, because a file that already carries its text keeps what it has: see What OCR reads.
• Searchable — the file's text is extracted and added to BriefTech's search index, so the document can be found by its text and used by AI features. (This "search index" is a different feature from the Index tab, which is the list of documents you build for a court bundle.) The text is taken from the PDF rendition, so a file that can't be converted to a PDF isn't searchable.

Format family	Examples	Converted to PDF	OCRed	Searchable
Word processing & documents	.doc, .docx, .odt, .rtf, .wpd, .wps	Yes	No¹	Yes
Spreadsheets & databases	.xls, .xlsx, .ods, .csv, .dbf	Yes	No¹	Yes
Presentations	.ppt, .pptx, .odp	Yes	No¹	Yes
PDF	.pdf	Already PDF	Yes	Yes
Images	.png, .jpg, .jpeg, .tif, .tiff, .bmp, .gif	Yes	Yes	Yes
High-efficiency images	.heic	No⁴	No	No
Email	.msg, .eml	Yes	No¹ (the email itself); image attachments are OCRed after you extract them as separate documents	Yes (attachments extractable as separate documents)
Web, markup & plain text	.txt, .md, .html, .htm, .xml	Yes	No¹	Yes
Vector graphics	.svg	Yes	Yes	Yes
CAD drawings	.dwg, .dxf, .dwf	Usually²	Yes²	Yes
Text-based formats	.sam, .igs, .pgl	Usually⁵	No¹	Usually⁵
Not converted (uploaded only)	.epub, .tsv, .wks, .wdb, .rst, .wpg	No³	No	No
Legacy raster images	.pct (PICT)	No	No	No
Archives & containers	.zip, .tar, .7z, .rar, .gz, .pst, .ost, .mbox	No	No	No (member names are detected, and members become searchable after extraction)

¹ BriefTech skips OCR for these formats, based on the file type it detects when it processes the file. Their text is taken from the converted PDF instead, so they are searchable without it. Text inside an image embedded in one — a scanned page pasted into a Word document, say — is not recovered this way; see Force OCR.

² BriefTech skips none of the three CAD formats on file type, so a drawing that converts to a PDF goes on to OCR. From there the ordinary rules apply — what BriefTech does is decided by the converted PDF and how much text it already carries; see What OCR reads. Two outcomes are particular to drawings:

• An empty or corrupt drawing — produces no PDF rendition, so it is not OCRed and its text isn't searchable.
• A .dxf file saved in DXF's text format — may be detected as a plain text file rather than as a drawing. Where that happens BriefTech converts and handles it as text, and it is not OCRed, as footnote ¹ describes.

³ BriefTech does not guarantee a PDF rendition for these formats, so treat them as not converted. To make one viewable and searchable, convert it to a supported format (for example PDF or DOCX) before uploading.

⁴ BriefTech accepts .heic files for upload but cannot open them, so they get no PDF rendition and are not searchable — they land in the Exceptions view. Convert a .heic image to JPEG or PNG before uploading it.

⁵ These formats are usually plain text. When the file you upload is plain text — the normal case — BriefTech detects it as text and converts it to a searchable PDF, and OCR is skipped as for the other text formats (footnote ¹). What you get is the file's text — so an IGES or HP-GL drawing becomes searchable text, not a picture of the drawing. A binary version of one of these formats is not converted and lands in the Exceptions view.

Related

The document lifecycle: from upload to ready

What happens to a file between upload and the moment it can be used.

Upload documents

Add documents to a matter from the Files tab — drag-and-drop, the Upload button, or whole folders.

File size and storage limits

Maximum file sizes, storage allowance, and path length limits.

Your First Matter

A guided, end-to-end first run — take a practice matter from sample files all the way to a downloaded court bundle.