Fixing a broken MD5 checksum

Some eCTD publishing software comes with a tool which allows for the creation of xml files and valid MD5 checksums for eCTDs which have been published and then edited in the eCTD output folder. ISI’s eCTDXpress and eCTD Office are two publishing tools which incorporate this handy feature.

This feature is especially useful when making minor changes to the published eCTD, such as PDF file open settings, creating a new hyperlink or bookmark, etc., without the need to republish the entire eCTD in order to create the valid MD5 checksums.
Without such a tool, changes have to be made to source documents, usually within a document management system (DMS), and the entire eCTD will need to be republished.

Recently I’ve been using a publishing tool which does not include this handy function, and making these minor changes has been a needlessly annoying and time consuming task.
Fix MD5 is a useful (and importantly, free) tool for eCTD publishers who need to make small changes to an eCTD after it has been published.

Example: After QC checking a technically valid eCTD I find a document which contains an incorrect hyperlink. As I’m pushed for time I don’t want to amend the document within the DMS and republish the entire submission, so I make the change on the eCTD output drive.

The eCTD is now of course, invalid:

Running Fix MD5 will fix the broken checksums, meaning that your eCTD will become technically valid. And it takes only a matter of seconds:

1. Download and extract the Fix MD5 files onto your local computer. This only needs to be done once.

2. Open the Fix MD5 program:

3.  Click “Browse” and select the eCTD sequence folder which you wish to ‘fix’. Then click on “Fix It!” to fix the broken checksum(s):

4. That’s it! The MD5 checksums have been fixed. Run a validation report to ensure that the eCTD is completely valid: