Project Management 411

Cut Waste! Stop Spreadsheet Sloppiness

by Bob Turek on July 15th, 2008

I read with some pain, but also a chuckle or two, CFO on-line’s sloppy spreadsheet practices article. I like to be organized, send files with naming conventions (source, date, and revision numbers), and like to assist the user of my excel files by using borders, bolded titles, and generally making them readable and printable. Amazingly, according to the article, most students and employees seem to simply send very poor looking documents that at first are unprintable. It’s simply work-creating laziness!

This creates an amazing amount of waste especially if you send your files to two or more people who have to fix your mess.

So here are four things everybody should do to help the world handle your spreadsheets:

1. Title your columns

2. Bold and italicize where necessary to make them easier to read

3. Wrap text (in comment fields in particular)

4. Make them printable

Apparently you will be one of the few who do these simple things and will probably be loved for it. Who knows, it could lead to a promotion.

Do you have any pet peaves related to spreadsheets? Share them! Are you a lazy spreadsheet user? REPENT!

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