Use Bulk Document Actions

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Last updated: Dec 17, 2025

You can use bulk document actions to make changes on up to 1,000 documents at once. These actions include editing field values, editing sharing settings, and managing documents.

Note When you complete a bulk action, you will receive an email indicating which documents succeeded or failed. Failed documents will include a reason.

Select Documents to Perform a Bulk Action On

From the Library

To select library documents for a bulk action:

  1. Open the Library.

  2. Use the views, search, or filters to narrow down the list of documents. Once you’ve started the bulk editing process, you can deselect individual documents, but you can only access filters and search at this stage.

  3. From the Library Actions menu, choose which set of documents to select. You can choose only the documents visible on the current page, or all documents (up to 1000) that fit the active filter and search criteria.

  4. From the Refine Selection page, review the list of selected documents and deselect any that you do not want to include in the bulk edit.

  5. Click Next. See below for help on the various bulk options.

You can select and export entire binders with the document export bulk action.

From the Cart

To select documents in your Cart for a bulk action:

  1. Open your Cart.

  2. From the Actions menu above the list of documents, choose which set of documents to select. You can choose only the documents visible on the current page, or all documents.

  3. From the Refine Selection page, review the list of selected documents and deselect any that you do not want to include in the bulk edit.

  4. Click Next. See below for help on the various bulk options.

Perform a Bulk Action

Edit Document Fields

Edit Fields

Note Not all fields are available to edit using bulk document actions. The field must be common across all selected documents, and cannot have dependencies.

  1. From the Choose Action page, select Edit Fields.

  2. Click Next.

  3. On the Edit Fields page, Vault displays editable fields.

  4. Edit a field value across all documents by clicking Edit field () and entering the new value. If the field is already populated on a document, this new value will replace the existing value. If you edit the field but leave it empty, Vault will clear the field across all selected documents.

  5. Optional: Reset a field to its existing values by clicking Revert ().

  6. Click Next.

  7. From the Confirmation page, review the summary of changes.

  8. Click Finish. When the changes are complete, a notice will appear in your Notifications page and Vault will send you an email.

Edit Sharing Settings

Add Users to Role

  1. From the Choose Action page, select Add Users to Role.

  2. Click Next.

  3. On the Add Users to Role page, select the user to add to the document, and the role they should have.

    Note More than one user can be added to a role on a document at one time.

  4. Click Next to open the Confirmation page. Review the summary of changes before moving on.

  5. Click Finish. When the changes are complete, a notice will appear in your Notifications page and Vault will send you an email.

Remove User from Role

  1. From the Choose Action page, select Remove User from Role.

  2. Click Next.

  3. On the Remove User from Role page, select the user to remove from the document, and the role they should be removed from.

  4. Click Next to open the Confirmation page. Review the summary of changes before moving on.

  5. Click Finish. When the changes are complete, a notice will appear in your Notifications page and Vault will send you an email.

Change Owner

  1. From the Choose Action page, select Change Owner.

  2. Click Next.

  3. On the Change Owner page, select the user to add as the new owner the document.

    Warning This action will replace the current owner.

  4. Click Next to open the Confirmation page. Review the summary of changes before moving on.

  5. Click Finish. When the changes are complete, a notice will appear in your Notifications page and Vault will send you an email.

Manage Documents

Change State

The bulk state change action does not verify the conditions for conditional user actions until you complete the action. Therefore, Vault may display and allow you to select actions that aren’t valid for all documents included in the bulk action. Documents that don’t meet the specified conditions will remain in their original state. Checked out documents cannot change states.

  1. From the Choose Action page, select Change State.

  2. Click Next.

  3. On the Choose State Change page, select the new state for your documents. You can only change the state of documents that are in the same lifecycle and lifecycle state, so Vault displays only the available states by lifecycle and state.

  4. Click Next to open the Confirmation page. Review the summary of changes before moving on.

  5. Click Finish. When the changes are complete, a notice will appear in your Notifications page and Vault will send you an email.

Delete Documents

You can delete documents in bulk depending on your permissions on the selected documents.

From the Choose Action page, select Delete Documents.

  1. To check if you have the Delete Documents permission on the selected documents, click Calculate Permissions. This will tell you how many documents you have permission to delete.

  2. Click Next to open the Confirmation page and review the summary of documents you chose for deletion. This action cannot be reversed.

  3. Click Finish. When the changes are complete, a notice will appear in your Notifications page and Vault will send you an email.

Add to Binder

You can perform a bulk action to add documents to a new binder, or to an existing binder. Vault always adds documents to the top level (“root”) section of the binder. If the binder’s root section already includes one of the selected documents, Vault does not add that document again.

To add documents to a new binder:

  1. From the Choose Action page, select Add to Binder.
  2. Select Create New.
  3. Select the document type for the binder from the Choose document type field**.**
  4. Click Next to open the Edit Details page and enter information for all required binder fields.
  5. Click Next to open the Confirmation page and review a summary of the binder field values and documents you are adding to the binder.
  6. Click Finish. When the action is complete, a notice will appear in your Notification page and Vault will send you an email. These notices include the number of documents successfully or unsuccessfully added to the binder as well as links to each document. Documents unsuccessfully added to the binder will not stop the bulk action from completion.

Document Export

With the document export bulk action, you can download source files, renditions, field values, and audit trails for multiple documents at once, including entire binders and their contents.

  1. From the Choose Action page, select Document Export.

  2. Click Next.

  3. Use the Choose Artifacts option.

  4. Choose a Version Selection option to apply to documents in selected binders.

  5. Under Define Document Naming Rule, select which document field to use for naming exported files.

  6. Click Next.

  7. Click Next to open the Confirmation page and review the summary of documents you chose for the export action.

  8. Click Finish. When the export is complete, a notice will appear in your Notifications page and Vault will send you an email. The notifications include a link to download a ZIP file containing your documents.

Note: Vault will not include the following characters in the file name of an export: < > : " " / ?

Export Artifact Options

For the component documents that you export, you can choose to include:

Renditions

Use the drop-down to select the rendition types to include. Viewable rendition, which exports the (typically auto-generated) PDF rendition of your document, is the most common. If the source file is a PDF, there is no separate viewable rendition. The drop-down list includes all available rendition types. Some may not apply to the documents you’ve selected.

Source Documents

This option exports the source file for a document. Source documents can be any type of file (ZIP, DOCX, CSV, etc.).

Document Fields

This option creates a single CSV file (TXT file if localization is enabled) listing each downloaded file and the associated document fields. If you download both viewable renditions and source files, the CSV file contains a separate record for each.

Document Attachments

This option exports attachments that exist on selected documents. Use the drop-down to select either the Latest Version of the attachments or All Versions.

Document Audit Trail

Select this checkbox to export document audit trails. The audit trails include all document versions. Choose between exporting these logs as a PDF or CSV. TXT export is available if localization is enabled in your Vault.

Document Versions & Binder Selection

For selected documents, Vault downloads the content associated with the latest document version. If you do not have access to the latest version of a document, you cannot download artifacts for that document.

Overlays & Signature Pages

Viewable renditions may export with or without their overlays and signature pages. This depends on your Vault’s settings.

File & Folder Naming

Vault uses the following standards for naming files during export:

  • Document file names: Selected document field, plus the file type extension, for example, REF-0023.docx. If the document field selected is blank, Vault defaults to Document Number.

  • Binder folder names: Document Name, for example, Compliance Pack CC-39.

  • Binder section folder names: Section name, for example, References.

  • Document fields file: “export_summary” plus date and time, for example, export_summary_2013_05_14_14_09_00_EDT.csv.

  • Attachment folder names: Document Name suffixed with _attach, for example, Compliance Pack CC-39_attach. If truncation would cause two attachment folder names to be identical, Vault replaces the last character of one of the truncated names with a numeric identifier, for example, Compli_attach and Compl2_attach.

If an Admin has enabled the Apply user-defined value as folder and file names in export option, the Export File Name document field is editable on the Doc Info page for each document, and binder section folder names are editable when editing binders.

Folder Path Length Restriction

Vault will truncate filenames and folder names for documents which would exceed the maximum character count specified by your Admin for in binder export settings. By default, this maximum is 230 characters. The character count includes all characters from the top level (drive letter in Windows) through the file extension. For example, the folder path “C:/Docs/CC123.pdf” is 17 characters.

Export Size Limits

You cannot export more than 50,000 artifacts and export ZIP files may not exceed 5GB, by default. You’ll see an error notification if a requested export exceeds either limit.

About Calculate Permissions

You can click the Calculate Permissions link to display the number of documents you have permission to perform bulk actions on.

Bulk Action Processing Time

Bulk changes (including role assignments) occur asynchronously, meaning that there may be a delay before you see the changes, particularly on Vaults with a lot of activity. Once you confirm a bulk action, Vault puts the changes in a queue with other asynchronous tasks. When the changes are complete, a notice appears in your Notifications page and Vault sends a notification email.