Opening and editing a portion of document

Sometimes you might only need to update a single provision or a subset of provisions in a document.  Or sometimes you might be working with other drafters in the same bill and only want to update the provisions that you are responsible for.  Or sometimes the bill might be so large, that opening up the whole document creates performance issues.  To address these various needs, we have made it possible to edit a portion of the document without needing to open the whole document

You can open one or more of the following types of provisions:

1. Parts

2. Chapters

3. Cross-headings

4. Sections/clauses

5. Regulations/articles/rules

6. Schedules

7. Schedule Parts

8. Schedule Chapters

9. Schedule cross-headings

Schedules created before version 17 was released (August 2024) are not automatically fragmented to the grouping level - you will only be able to edit the whole schedule as a portion. However, as soon as the document containing the schedule is saved again, all schedules in the document will be fragmented at the grouping level and you will be able to edit individual Parts etc. of a schedule.

How to edit a portion of a document

1. From the Project Tab, click on the Actions menu for the working version you want to edit.

2. Select Edit portion of document.

3. In the dialogue box, select the provisions you wish to edit.

4. Click on the Edit button to open the selected provisions in the Editor.

Selecting provisions to open

The dialogue box will show a list of all provisions in the document, e.g. Parts, Chapters, sections, articles, schedules etc.

You can select one or more provisions and they don’t need to be next to each other. All selected provisions must be at the same level so, for example, you can select a number of different sections dotted around a Bill, or you could select a couple of different Parts of an SI but you can’t select a cross-heading group and an individual section in a Bill.

If you’ve previously edited a portion of the document then provisions you edited will be selected by default.

If you still you already have locks on provisions in the document you are selecting, you will be forced to open these provisions so that you can save any detected unsaved changes from a previous editing session.  As soon as the locks are released (upon Save) you can go back and open a smaller portion if desired.

Working in the Editor with a portion of a document

When you open a portion of the document in the Editor, the highest level provisions e.g. sections, regulations or Parts, will have their numbers locked so that when you renumber the document, they do not get automatically updated.  You can manually change these numbers if necessary but you will need to renumber the whole document if provisions not in your portion are going to be affected by these number changes.

The renumber feature will only renumber provisions in the portion, even if “whole document” is selected.

The Tag x-refs and Update x-refs features will only tag/update references within the portion of the document but will search the whole document for the target provisions, not just the portion - see References .

See Opening a document in the Editor for more about opening the whole document rather than a portion.