Documents

These guides cover the full workspace included in the Pro trial. Compare Free, Starter and Pro for ongoing access; Assist and iPad Companion require Pro.

Once a brief is in, the Brief section is your reading workspace. PDFs, Word files, emails, spreadsheets and other supported formats open in the reading pane, with tools suited to each format. You can also open an original in its usual application when you need its full layout or editing tools.

If you haven't brought a brief in yet, start with Importing a brief — this guide picks up from there.

Everything in one pane

The reading pane supports these formats:

PDFs — including bookmarked court books. The hyperlinks inside a PDF keep working: an internal link lands at the exact spot it points to, and a web link opens in your browser.
Word documents — both .docx and the legacy .doc.
Email — Outlook .msg and standard .eml, shown as the message you'd recognise.
Spreadsheets — .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb, .xls and .ods, laid out as a scrollable grid. Large sheets show when rows or columns have been omitted; open the original in your spreadsheet app to inspect the whole workbook.
PowerPoint decks — .pptx, as a simplified preview of slide text and embedded images. Use Open in system app for the original slide layout.
Images — photographs and scanned exhibits (.jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .webp), shown as the picture itself.
Text saved from AI Assist — Markdown and plain-text files filed from its inbox open in the Brief reading pane.

A modern Word file (.docx) is converted to a PDF for reading using a built-in engine. If LibreOffice is installed, Lexware normally uses it for better layout fidelity. Some complex files cannot be rendered: Lexware reports the problem and offers the original. It can still make a readable .docx's text searchable even when its page preview fails; Activity → Retry Word previews tries to restore the preview and page references.

Legacy .doc files also render through LibreOffice. On a Mac, Lexware has a built-in conversion path when LibreOffice is absent. On Windows, a legacy .doc needs LibreOffice for a PDF rendering; without it, or if conversion fails, Lexware offers a simplified text preview that may be incomplete. Check the original in Word whenever layout or completeness matters.

The brief as a shelf of volumes

Lexware shows the brief the way it was delivered — as a shelf of lever-arch Volumes. Each volume is an upright binder with its name printed down the spine and its tab range on the label. Open one and it turns into that volume's numbered-tab index, with a date against each document, so a multi-volume brief reads like the binders you'd otherwise have stacked on your desk. Documents that don't belong to a volume sit together at the end as loose papers, and the Shelf button — or Esc — takes you back to the shelf. Opening a document brings it up in the reading pane.

Prefer an index to a shelf? Switch to Tree to see the whole index as one structure. A desk keeps up to six documents at hand, each remembering its page. On the shelf, ⌘F on Mac or Ctrl+F on Windows finds documents across the volumes; while reading, the same shortcut searches inside the focused document. A document filed at several positions appears again as a cross-reference to the same document, sharing its marks. Separate deliveries and versions can instead be separate documents with their own marks.

Highlights, margin comments and quick tabs

In a PDF or a rendered Word document, select a passage to highlight it in colour, add a margin comment or create a Quick tab. Press T with a selection to label a tab from the passage, or use the reader's quick-tab button to mark the current page. Activating the tab returns to its page; a tab made from a passage also briefly marks that passage. The selection toolbar's Copy link gives you a link back to the pinpoint. Press F to hide the reading toolbars, then press it again to bring them back.

Your markings stay in Lexware. Highlights and comments are stored inside Lexware, never written back into the document itself. The original file is left exactly as it arrived, so what you scribble in the margin is yours and never alters the evidence. See how Lexware looks after your information.

Short names and volumes

Give a document a Short name so it's easy to recognise in a list or in your chronology. Lexware keeps the formal title and original filename.

You can add and rename volumes, move documents between them, and use Rearrange shelf to put the binders in your preferred order. Reset to A–Z restores alphabetical order; Loose papers stays last. Deleting a volume lets you keep its papers in Loose papers or hide them with the volume. Show hidden lets you recover hidden material. These choices organise the brief inside Lexware; they never move or rename your source files, and checking a source folder for new documents does not undo them.

The Intray — for things that arrive later

A brief is rarely complete on day one. The Intray — its button sits in the top bar, wherever you are in the matter — is the front door for the documents that turn up afterwards: the late affidavit, the supplementary disclosure, the email your instructing solicitor forwards mid-trial.

Drop in a document or a forwarded email (.msg or .eml). It waits there with its covering-email provenance, if any. Lexware flags possible new versions and identifies exact duplicates. For an ordinary document, Quick file sends it to Loose papers; expand the item to choose a volume, deal with a version, or add it to Pleadings, Authorities or Transcripts. Date scanning for pending PDFs and Word documents runs when you choose Scan dates; covering emails stage their sent dates on arrival. The correspondence guide covers attachment filing and the Outlook add-in.

A PDF carrying attached PDFs has a File bundle action: its intact cover and attached PDFs go into one binder. Track progress, retry or undo the filing in Activity. For a PDF already on the shelf, Bring in attached files starts the same process. Non-PDF attachments remain inside the cover and are disclosed as unsupported.

Reading two side by side

Use Lay a second document alongside in the reader to compare two documents. The second pane can hold an email, so the covering message can sit beside its attachment. To read two different places in the same PDF or rendered Word document, use Split this document horizontally; each half keeps its own page and zoom. Read two pages side by side is the separate book-style view of facing pages.

Sending a document out

For PDFs and Word documents with a PDF rendering, Send to LiquidText carries your highlights and margin comments into a separate copy. On a Mac, PDF Expert offers the same handoff when installed, and DEVONthink can receive the document itself. Mac integrations are detected automatically. On Windows, Lexware tries to open the copy in LiquidText and falls back to your default PDF app if it cannot; check the result message to see where it opened.

Searching inside your documents

Document titles and details are searchable from the moment a brief is in. PDFs and Word documents are queued for text reading in the background; emails and spreadsheet cell text are indexed on import. Matter search reports its coverage. If work remains, Activity offers Index remaining, Retry failures or Retry Word previews, as appropriate. A preview does not guarantee that every format has searchable text: ordinary image files, for example, remain pictures.

Press ⌘K on Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows to search the whole matter at once — the words inside documents, the documents themselves, chronology events and transcript lines, grouped by result type. From any group, open the full search workspace to page through every match and narrow it with filters.

Image-only PDFs can be read on the device using Apple Vision on macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later, and Windows OCR on Windows where an OCR language pack is installed. On earlier macOS versions, or without the required Windows language pack, they remain image-only unless they already contain a text layer.