Export a Project

When you're preparing to close, suspend, or archive your case, you can export all the projects within the database, then download the exports for outside storage. The export saves your documents, review work, and some analytics to make it accessible outside of Everlaw and to meet data retention requirements for any databases you delete. 

Use this article for best practices to get the most complete export for all your projects and for detailed instructions on how to complete a project export. 

If you don't need to export your full project, and instead want export one or more specific subsets of documents, see our Export Documents from the Results Table article.

To learn more about your options to deactivate a case, see Options to Deactivate a Case.

Closing a case: Export and deletion overview

If your case is fully closed and you don't have the expectation of working with the data again, you can delete the database that houses the projects. After you delete the database from Everlaw, there are no more monthly fees associated with hosting the data. You also have the option to delete individual projects within a database, and keep the rest of the database up and running. It's very important that you export your data before you delete the database.

If, at a later time, you do need to access exported and deleted data, you can complete a database restoration. This involves uploading the exported documents and review work into a new database so you can access them again. 

Exporting and closing a case happens in three steps:

1. When you're ready to close your case, initiate a project-level export for each project within the database. The steps to export a project are explained in this article.
   You may also complete exports of additional data and work product that are not part of a project export.
   Optionally, you can have Everlaw manage the export for you.
2. Once the exports complete, pull the exported data for long-term storage. This can be outside Everlaw, or added to the Everlaw Staging Drive.

3. Once you have pulled all the data from each project, you delete the entire database. Deletion is permanent and destructive of everything contained within it, so it's important to make sure you have backed up the data prior to deletion. See our Delete a Project or Database article for detailed instructions on how to delete databases and projects.

   Tip

   If you anticipate that your case will reactivate, you should instead consider Everlaw Archive™ or suspension to keep the case fully available when you need to get back into it.

Time your export

To make sure your exports can complete prior to the next billing cycle, we recommend starting all export activity at least two weeks before the end of the month. This gives your team time to complete and download the exports, and then delete the database, before the database rolls into the next month's billing cycle.

Export speed is roughly 1.5 million docs a day and deletion speed is roughly 1 million docs a day. Please account for download speeds to your local machine as well, or contact Everlaw Support for a managed export.

Understand and prepare for a project export

Project exports are not exhaustive of all the objects and data in your project. Most data is exportable from elsewhere in the project, and some is not.

To maximize data preservation, supplement your project export by individually exporting any objects not included in the standard package.

This is particularly important to keep in mind if you are exporting project data in anticipation of suspending, archiving, or deleting a project or database:

• Once suspended, only the Database Settings page, the Organization Admin page, and the Message Center are accessible
• Archived projects are completely inaccessible until they are reactivated, so make sure to complete exports prior to archiving
• Deleting a database is completely destructive of all data within all projects in the database

If your intent is to preserve your data such that your project(s) are fully restorable in Everlaw, you must keep your project(s) in a suspended or archived state; databases restored from project exports do not retain all analytics, configurations, or settings.

To learn more about project and database suspension, see our Suspend and Reactivate Databases and Projects article.

To learn about Everlaw Archive, see our Everlaw Archive article.

What’s included in a project export?

Make sure that you export everything you might want or need in the future. A project-level export includes:

• All the documents in the project (native, image, and text)
• Review work applied to the documents:
  • Codes
  • Notes
  • Redactions, including redaction set information
  • Highlights
  • User-editable metadata
  • Binders
  • Stories (including any Stories labels applied to documents)
• Load files to reload the data later
• Some Storybuilder work product:

  • Deposition transcripts: The original native transcript file

    Note

    Video files and sync files (MDB) are not included.

  • Deposition transcript annotations: A CSV, DOCX, and PDF of the transcript annotations
  • People profiles: Exported as an importable CSV file
• Document history
• User History

What’s not included in a project export?

There is additional work product and analytics data in each Everlaw project that is not included in a project export. This section outlines what is not included, and how to export those materials that are exportable. 

Exportable elsewhere

The following are not included in a project export, but can be exported from elsewhere on Everlaw while the project is active:

Exportable Object	Export Instructions Article
Project messages	Message Center Overview
Search Term Reports	Search Term Reports
Storybuilder Deposition Prep and Summary Note Deposition transcripts, transcript annotations, and People profiles can be included in a project export	Deposition Preparation
Storybuilder Exhibits	Exhibits in Depositions and Drafts
Deposition video and sync file	Work with a Deposition Transcript
Storybuilder Drafts	Storybuilder Drafts
Storybuilder Evidence page Note While a project export does not include a full Evidence page export, the work product CSV includes information about documents added to the Evidence page and any labels applied to them.	Storybuilder Evidence Page
Writing Assistant	Any inserted Writing Assistant outputs are exported when you export their associated Draft/Deposition. Storybuilder Drafts Deposition Preparation
Custom Extractions	Generated extractions can be exported in a CSV export.  CSV Export
Descriptions	Generated Descriptions can be exported with a CSV export. CSV Export
Topics	Generated Topics can be exported with a CSV export. CSV Export
Coding Suggestions	Generated Coding Suggestions can be exported with a CSV export. CSV Export
Upload reports	Manage Native Uploads
User and Project Analytics User history is exportable with a project export. Additional visualizations are exportable separately.	Evaluate Your Reviewers Using Project Analytics   Evaluate your Project using Project Analytics

Not exportable

The following objects are not exportable at all:

• Assignments / Assignment Groups
• Clusters
• Homepage folders
• Predictive coding models: While predictive coding models cannot be exported, they can be saved and leveraged for future use as part of a multi-matter model. Learn more in our Multi-matter Models article.
• Everlaw AI: The following cannot be exported, but can be saved into a template project to be used in future projects. Learn more in our Projects article.
  • Coding Suggestions criteria
  • Writing Assistant templates
  • Extraction fields configuration
• Everlaw AI: Case description
• Everlaw AI: Summaries
• Deep Dive responses: While you cannot bulk-export Deep Dive responses, you can copy responses into Storybuilder Drafts/Depositions, and export them from there. Learn how to export Drafts and Depositions in Storybuilder Drafts and Deposition Preparation.

Legal holds

Legal holds are housed at the Organization level, on the Organization Home > Legal holds page. When you delete a database that is associated with one or more legal holds, the holds are preserved within the database's associated matter on the Organization Legal Holds page.

Requirements

Required permissions

• Organization Admins can export projects from the Organization home's Projects & Users tab
• Users who are both Database Admins and Project Admins can export projects from the Database Settings page
• Project Admins who do not have Organization Admin or Database Admin permissions can export all the documents in a project through the results table, but cannot export full projects. For more information on how to do this type of export, visit Export Documents from the Results Table.

Prerequisite

Some software requires that multi-value fields use specific separators (delimiters) between them. If a specific separator is important for your project export, a Project Admin can adjust the setting for the separator. This setting determines whether multi-value address fields (To, Cc, Bcc) export with their original values, commas, or semicolons separating the values. If you know the exported files will be opened with software with specific requirements, see Project Settings Metadata: Metadata Fields, Aliases,  Editable Metadata, and Other Settings for details on how to update this setting prior to running the export.

Export a project

To export a project:

1. Get to the page where you'll export from:
   • [Organization Admins] Go to Organization home  > Projects & Users tab.
   • [Database/Project Admins] Go to Project Management > Database Settings.
2. Open the Export project dialog for the project you are exporting:

   • [Organization Admins] In the Projects tab, find the project you plan to export. In the More column for that project, select the three-dot menu, then Export project.

     Note

     If OA access is disabled, you must be a Database Admin and a user on at least one project to export any of the projects from the database.

   • [Database Admins] In the Actions column for the project you plan to export, select the three-dot menu, then Export project.
     
3. Choose which files to include.
   
   By default, all files - images, text, natives, load files, and review work product - are included in the export. Deselect any of the included files by unchecking the box. 
   • Review work product includes the following:
     • Notes
     • Codes
     • Ratings
     • Redactions, including information about redaction sets
     • Highlights
     • User-editable metadata
     • Binders
     • Stories (including any Stories labels applied to documents).
   • Storybuilder work product includes:

     • Deposition transcripts: The original native transcript file

       Note

       Video files and sync files (MDB) are not included.

     • Deposition transcript annotations: A CSV, DOCX, and PDF of the transcript annotations
     • People profiles: Exported as an importable CSV file
   • User activity: If selected, the export includes a user_activity folder within the data folder with at least one CSV for each user (current and removed) on the project. The events included in the export mirror those in the export from Project Management > User activity > Historic. The columns within the CSV are Date, Time, and Description, which describes the activity.
   • Document history: If selected, Document history is exported as one or more CSV files included in a document_history folder within the Data folder of the downloaded project export. Each CSV file is named after the Bates range of documents included within it. The limit for each file is 50 MB. The actions included in the history for each document mirror those listed in the History tab in the review window.
4. [Optional] Configure the Native advanced options.  
   
   • Native file naming scheme
     • You can choose between Bates number, original filename, or Bates number and original filename
     • If you elect to clean up native filenames, characters like colons and backslashes are replaced with underscores to be compatible with all operating systems.

   • Native encryption: For password-protected documents, you can choose to export a decrypted version of the file by default or choose to export the original encrypted file.  The option to export decrypted versions is only applicable to encrypted documents with passwords provided. 

     Note

     Encrypted documents uploaded before the March 3, 2023 release will have decrypted versions created and stored upon reprocessing. After reprocessing, decrypted versions will be available for export.

5. Choose whether or not to encrypt your export.
   
   Here are some details on encryption:
   • AES-256 is the recommended, more secure, encryption option. To open an export encrypted with AES-256, you may need an application such as 7-Zip or WinZip. 
   • If you choose to encrypt, you must create a password. You can create your own or choose a randomly generated one by clicking the key icon. 
     By default, you will receive your password in an email upon export completion. The email will be sent to you only. Deselect Email me a copy of my password if you do not wish to receive it.
6. When you have configured your settings, select Export to start the export. An export card on the project homepage under the Batches and Exports column displays the export's progress.

The export is available for download for 27 days.

Additional export details

Here are some additional notes about project exports:

• When you export review work, redactions that are not applied to images will not be applied to images
• Any datetime values in the exported load file will retain and append the project timezone at the time of the export; if there are datetime values with no timezone information, they will be exported without any appended timezones
• If documents in the export have identical filenames, the export will fail, and you will be notified. The Bates/control numbers of the documents causing the issue will be shown in the notification popup, as well as in a report stored in the Batches & Exports column.
• You can check in on the export's progress and a see time estimate under Batches and Exports. You can pause or abort the task from this card.
• If an export has been aborted, you can select See details on the bottom of the card to see who aborted the export, export start time, stop time, and task duration.
  
• If you chose to encrypt your file, you can view your password by selecting Copy password. The password is copied to your clipboard, and you can also copy the displayed password, which you should copy and keep secure. The export card expires 28 days after the export completes.
   
• After you start the export task, you can leave the page without interrupting the export progress. You will receive a notification at the bottom right of the page when your task completes, with a link to download the ZIP file.
• You can monitor and access exports on the appropriate Tasks area of the Database Settings page or Organization home.
• If your project export failed, it might be because the project does not have any documents in it. If you experience other reasons for export failure, please contact support@everlaw.com
• Additional load file headers are present based on the metadata of files in the export. This is true of both non-editable and editable fields.
• If you need additional results table columns that are not included in the default load file, you can export them via the CSV export option.

How long will my export take? 

The time it takes to export from Everlaw depends on the size of the export. The export may take longer than other exports on Everlaw, particularly if images need to be converted to PDF’s. Since you are exporting all associated work and load files in addition to the documents, it is expected to be a fairly large and slow export. A full database with over a million documents, depending on the number of images, could take a day or more to process.

What happens if my export includes a document flagged as malicious?

When exporting to ZIP, if your export includes either natives (whether uploaded through the native uploader or as part of a processed upload) or images for one or more files flagged as malicious, you will receive a warning dialogue before your export begins. This warning dialogue allows you to view a list of all documents in your export set which have been flagged as malicious. It then gives you the option to either include or exclude those files from your export.

Select the blue number next to the document icon to open a search results table containing all documents in your export which are flagged as malicious; this can be helpful in determining whether it may be possible to exclude these files from your export. Once you have decided how to proceed, you can:

• Select Without flagged documents to omit all malicious documents from your export
• Select With flagged documents to include these files.

Once you have selected your preferred configuration, select Continue to start the ZIP export. Your resulting ZIP can be downloaded from the Batches and Exports column of the home page. 

Download a completed export

When your export is complete, the export card will have a download button. Select it  for your download options.

Learn more about SFTP downloads in our Download Exports or Productions using Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) article.
Select See details to see  who initiated the export, start time, completion time, and task duration. Task duration includes time paused as well.

Have Everlaw manage your export

Everlaw can complete a managed export of all project data for all the projects in a database. Once the data is exported, it can be stored outside of Everlaw for long-term storage. Then, you can delete the database and there will be no charge for the database starting from the beginning of the next billing period after the data is deleted.

A managed export incurs a one-time fee based on the hosted size of the files to be included, plus shipping and handling in the event physical media is requested. Everlaw will always seek your approval for any charges prior to performing the work and will notify you if there will be any adjustments to the cost.

An export provides a full set of documents and review data that can be reused as needed without an ongoing outlay for storage, but you must make your own reliable storage arrangements. 

Please contact the Customer Experience team to get specific pricing for your export. If you don't have a direct contact, email support@everlaw.com.