Duplicating a document version

You can create a new working version of a document within a project by duplicating an existing version. Working versions, snapshots and significant versions can all be duplicated.

Duplicating documents can be used to allow you to edit read-only documents, i.e., Snapshots and Significant versions.

For example, if a document has been shared with your organisation, it will appear as a ‘Shared’ Significant version, which is not editable. If you duplicate this Shared version, you can edit it as a working version. See Documents and folders on the Project Tab for more detail.

How to duplicate a document version

On the Project Tab, select Duplicate version from the Actions menu next to the version you want to duplicate.
In the pop-up window (see screenshot below), specify a Folder that the duplicate will be placed in. This can be an existing folder selected from the menu; alternatively, type in the name of a new folder and press Enter to create a new folder.
Enter a name for the duplicate version in the Version description field.
Leave the “Strip out page/line numbers” option checked. (See note below.)
Click Create.

A duplicate version of the document will be created as a working version on the Project Tab in the folder you specified.

A snapshot titled ‘Duplicated’ will also be created under the original Working version (unless the duplicated document was a Significant version, e.g. a ‘Shared’ document).

The duplicated version will have the same permissions as the original version (see Managing document permissions).

Converting Bill to Act or SI/SSI/NISR from Draft to Made:

Previously, the conversion of a Bill to an Act or a Draft SI to Made was done via duplicating the document and selecting an option. This is no longer the case after v20.0 of Lawmaker - there is now a special ‘Convert’ option on the Actions menu next to the document version.

See the updated guidance here:

“Strip out page/line numbers”

Within Lawmaker, certain versions of bills will contain page and line numbering information (stored as additional tags within the XML of the document). For example, if you choose to apply amendments to a bill version, the resulting “as-amended” version of the bill will contain page and line information in the XML. Similarly, a PDF snapshot under a bill version will contain page and line information, assuming the option to add line numbering was selected when that PDF was generated. A published significant version of a bill is also likely to contain page and line numbering information.

If you deselect “Strip out page/line numbers” when duplicating one of these versions, the page and line markers will remain in the XML of your newly duplicated version. This will sometimes cause problems with functions like Promoting and demoting provisions and Tagging References.

However, there may be times when it is appropriate to preserve page and line information in a duplicated version:

You are duplicating a version of a bill which you intend to apply further amendments to (see Auto-application of amendments to a Bill version)
You wish to investigate problems with page or line numbering in a bill print.

In those cases, it is appropriate to deselect “Strip out page/line numbers” in the modal.