Import an existing chronology from Word or Excel

You are taking over a case, or the client has sent their own chronology, and it exists as a table in Word or Excel. Rather than typing it in again, import it once: every row becomes an event on the timeline, and from then on you work in Juristic.

Two questions decide the settings. How are the dates written in the table? 03/04/2024 is 3 April in one format and 4 March in another. And does the table's formatting mean anything? Bold for the key events, or highlighting someone chose with care, is worth keeping.

Put the chronology into the template

1. Open the timeline and click Import in the toolbar on the left. In the Upload panel, choose the Tables tab.

   

2. Click Download template and choose Excel or Word, whichever the existing chronology is in.

3. Copy the chronology into the template, one event per row: the date, the title and, where you have them, the description, notes, people and tags. Fill in the end date only for an event that runs over a period. Every row needs a date and a title: a row without either is left out of the import. Separate several people or tags in one cell with commas.

Import it

1. Back on the Tables tab, click Upload files and choose the filled-in template, or drag it into the panel. Click Import.

2. In Choose date format, pick the format the dates in the table are written in, for example DD/MM/YYYY when 03/04/2024 means 3 April. The timeline shows its dates in this format too; you can change that later.

   

3. Choose the styling. Keep spreadsheet styling keeps the bold, italics and other formatting of the title and description cells, and from Excel the colour of each title cell becomes the colour of its event. Use organisation default styling imports plain text in the firm's default event colours, so the events look like the rest of the firm's timelines.

4. Click Import. The rows appear on the timeline as events.

5. Go through the events in the table of events and correct anything that came in wrong. See check and correct the chronology in a table.

Which styling to choose

Tips from practice

• Clean the table first. Unmerge cells, give every row its own date and write all the dates in one format. A table that reads cleanly imports cleanly.
• Import once, then work in Juristic. Make further changes on the timeline, not in the old table, so there is one chronology and not two.
• The documents come afterwards. The templates' Documents column is not imported. Link each event to its evidence on the timeline: see link each event to its evidence.
• Tags carry the issues. If the old chronology marks events by issue, put the issues in the tags column. See tag events by issue.

Starting from scratch instead? See start the chronology for a new dispute.