Today I received an email containing documentation for an important meeting scheduled to take place later this week. I was about to print one of the documents, an Excel workbook, and decided to “print preview” it first, and good thing I did – it was not set for print.
So, muttering “is it too much to ask?”, I began to:
- format the tables to make them reader-friendly,
- adjust layout, paper size, % of normal, and margins for optimal fit of the content on a page,
- insert header and footer (sheet name & page number),
- set “header row repeat”.
Even though this doesn’t seem like an overwhelming amount of work, given that these changes had to be made to every one of the 11 sheets in the workbook, it took me more than 20 minutes. This may not sound like a big deal – after all, it’s just 20 minutes of one person’s time, and as important I think I am, the universe didn’t explode and the world didn’t come to an end just because I had to spend some time formatting spreadsheets, rather than reviewing the content of those in preparation for the meeting, like I had planned.
On the other hand, think about this: the document in question was sent to many people – I counted at least 25 on the distribution list. Let’s say 20 of them decided to print the document:
20 people x 20 minutes = 6 hours 40 minutes.
That’s almost an entire workday wasted doing busy work, which is certainly material enough to reflect on the sender’s professional image. Here are a few things we can do to prevent these kinds of situations:
- make a point of ensuring that every document we produce is properly formatted and set for print;
- help our teams develop good formatting and print-setting habits – thread carefully on this one, the best way to ensure co-operation is to be friendly, constructive and helpful (e.g., share formatting tips and tricks with others, lead by example);
- if you get a non-printable document – let the sender know (it could have been simply an oversight on their part), or even send them a re-formatted version for re-circulation.
Have a great week!
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#1 | Mickey | July 15, 2010 at 14:49
Quick question. Did you need to print it for yourself only or for other people as well?
#2 | Judit Halin | July 25, 2010 at 13:06
Mickey, the document was sent to a large group of people and everyone was supposed to print a copy - I ended up printing it for my immediate team of five people, and one other person I bumped into at the printer when they were trying to print the original version (it could be fun to watch people bang their head against the wall in the copy room, but helping the person is even more satisfying). Thank you for your question and apologies for the delay with responding - i've been very busy lately, and planning to get back to normal in the next couple of weeks.