Short answer. Yes. Rule 132 requires that the purpose for which evidence is offered must be specified — this is not optional, and the court will consider no evidence that has not been formally offered in the first place, with that stated purpose included as part of a valid, complete offer.
What the law says
The court shall consider no evidence which has not been formally offered.
Rule 132, Section 34 — Offer of evidence. Read the full provision →
What the law says
The purpose for which the evidence is offered must be specified.
Rule 132, Section 34 — Offer of evidence. Read the full provision →
No evidence counts unless it is formally offered
Rule 132, Section 34 opens with a blanket rule that governs everything that follows: the court shall consider no evidence which has not been formally offered. It does not matter how relevant a document, object, or piece of testimony might be, or how much time was spent presenting it during trial — if it was never formally offered, the court is not permitted to weigh it in deciding the case at all.
You must state what the evidence is meant to prove
The second sentence adds the specific requirement your question is about: the purpose for which the evidence is offered must be specified. A formal offer is not complete simply by naming the exhibit or the witness — the rule requires you to state, at the time of the offer, exactly what fact or issue that evidence is being offered to establish.
Why stating the purpose actually matters
The same piece of evidence can often be relevant to more than one fact in a case, or to none at all depending on how it is used. Specifying the purpose tells the court, and the opposing party, precisely what proposition you are asking the evidence to support, which is what allows the court to rule on whether it is admissible for that particular purpose and what allows the other side to object on the correct grounds if it disagrees.
The purpose also limits what the evidence may later prove
Because the rule ties admission to a stated purpose, evidence offered for one purpose is not automatically treated as proof of every other fact it might conceivably touch. If you plan to rely on a document or a witness's testimony to establish a particular point, the safest course is to make sure that point is the one you actually state when you formally offer it, since the purpose you specify is what defines the evidence's role in the case going forward. Evidence offered only for one narrow purpose, and admitted on that basis, generally cannot later be stretched to support an entirely different proposition you never actually stated at the time of the offer.