All good projects – and even the not-so-good ones – must come to an end. When they do, you’re sitting on a mountain of documentation, from change notices to certificates for payment, shop drawing logs to incremental progress billings.

If you’re a user of our software, this documentation is all tucked away nicely in the digital filing cabinet that is FIVE – perfectly organized and ready for archival. But what if you want to keep copies of your project data outside of FIVE?

Sometimes lawyers or insurance adjusters need access to a project’s data, but they won’t likely have the inclination to use FIVE themselves. Or maybe you want to be 100% sure you will be able to review project data 10 or 20 years down the road – and even though Statslog’s track record is stellar in that regard, with FIVE being able to read 1990’s era project data – there’s no harm in being extra safe, just in case.

If you’ve diligently saved a PDF copy of every document as it was created – good for you! You already have all of your documentation in one place, ready for redistribution. If not, then you’re in the unenviable position of having to manually view and print each report & form one-by-one – until now that is!

Say Hello to Your Little Friend – The FIVE PDF Export Tool

The new FIVE PDF Export Tool does all the legwork navigating through your project data to export every report and form as a PDF file. You can choose to export all of the PDFs to a series of folders (named after each tab), or into a single ZIP file archive (for easier distribution).

Using the FIVE PDF Export Tool

After opening a project, click the FIVE menu button > More Project Actions > Export Project:

When prompted, select the All Documents option:

The FIVE PDF Export Tool window appears:

Select the Export to folders option to export every PDF to folders on your computer. One folder will be created per FIVE tab (e.g. Requests, Notices, Instructions, etc…). Inside each folder, a copy of every report and form related to that tab will be saved (e.g. RFIs, CCNs, SIs, etc…).

Select the Export to ZIP archive option to export the PDFs into a single ZIP archive. The folder structure within the archive will be the same as the structure created by the Export to folders option, but having everything compressed into a single file will make distribution easier.

Once you’ve selected your export options, click the Next button. You will prompted to select an export location:

Select the folder where you would like the documentation to be saved, then click the Next button. You will prompted to confirm your selected options:

Review your selections, then click Export to begin the process. The tool will start scanning the project, saving a PDF copy of every report and form as it goes:

The export process can take a while, especially for larger projects. Fortunately, you can leave the tool running in the background for as long as it needs while you do other work. When the export process is finished, you will see the following message:

That’s all there is to it! Click the link to explore the folder where the documents are saved, then click Close to exit the tool.

The FIVE PDF Export Tool is Available NOW!

The FIVE PDF Export Tool comes with every installation of FIVE and is available to use right now.

If you have any questions about the tool, or ideas for further enhancements, please contact us!

If this tool sounds interesting, but you aren’t a user yet – give FIVE a try today!