You may have heard the phrase “tiff processing” before if you have been involved in an eDiscovery matter. While it may make sense to “tiff” documents in some matters, there are core set of file types that should very rarely be converted to static images such as .xls, .mdb and .csv just to name a few.
Think of a “tiff” as an image similar to a pdf file only it is in a non-proprietary format. As a matter of fact, if you have ever asked for the production of electronic data to be produced as pdf files, they are most often converted to tiff first, and then subsequently converted to PDFs.
Much of the old advantages of tiffing all documents in order to speed up review no longer apply as more advanced review software have near native viewers built in that allow for fast review speeds similar to a tiff based review. Regardless of this fact, .csv, .mdb, and .xls files are interactive and any formulas or pivot tables embedded in cells would never been seen if printed to paper or to a static image. Looking at a print out of an excel file versus looking at the actual files are two totally different things and should be taken into consideration when developing the processing and review strategy of electronically stored information.
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