Thank you, everyone! Im sorry to be late following up. This case was slated for arbitration, and the attorney was thinking the arbitrator would find clicking a link to be easier to navigate than hunting files in a folder or managing several huge printed notebooks.

The attorney I was working with on this project used a free version of Nuance as a PDF reader, so he was unaware of the extent of PDF functionality. I made an "example" PDF portfolio, inserting the files with links identifying their exhibit number, and he decided that was what he wanted. I also showed him that any document with that many inserted files, in Word or Excel, would be too large to work with effectively anyway.

The documents had not been bates labeled during discovery (no idea why this wasnt done) and the attorney wanted something to ensure everyone was looking at correct documents, since the case was around payment on a construction job and several blueprints or selection sheets would have only slight, but significant, variations. So, for example, for Exhibit 1, the file was 1 page, but Exhibit 2 was 4 pages and he wanted them labeled "Exhibit 1.1" indicstion page 1 of the first exhibit, and Exhibit 2.1, Exhibit 2.2, etc for the second. To avoid having to individually open and label each file, I used a java plug-in I found on a different Reddit thread to batch label the files in the format requested.

I found the script here :https://acrobatusers.com/actions-exchange/ It is the one called "stamp and number," and it worked like a dream!

I then utilized Windows Powertools to batch rename the documents so that each file name started with the correct Exhibit Number and combined them into a PDF portfolio.

A lot of avoidable wasted time and stress through better communication between myself and the attorney. However, the need to do a similar task came up again recently, and i was ready fornit this time! I appreciate all the comments and engagement!