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people using 'set print area' on an excel spreadsheet

205 replies

thecolonelbumminganugget · 17/09/2016 11:22

It annoys me so much I have to leave my desk and make a cup of tea to calm down everytime someone emails me a spreadsheet where they've done this!

There is no justification for this. Either:

A - you have set the important information to print and everything else is backing information. In which case you need two tabs, one with the summary, the other with the backing so anyone who wants to can trace it through but the important information is summarised on the front sheet. Or;

B - it's all equally important but YOU only needed to print part of it. In which case either select cells and use print selected or use clear print area before you save it in a shared location or forward it on. If it is the case that the bit you needed to print is the same bit everyone else will need then I refer you to point A above.

All that happens is that you send it on, the recipient prints it to read, or worse still when they've added their own work to it and printed it, the bit they wanted didn't print because it's not in the print area you dictated, they throw it in the bin, swear at you behind your back and have to go back to their desk, clear print area, and print it again.

I know I'm not being unreasonable when I say the only reason to do this is because you hate everyone you work with!

(Oh god that feels better)

OP posts:
ClashCityRocker · 19/09/2016 07:33

We can tech up. We can't make our clients tech up.

And, as I said, a client file typically includes lots of third party data where it would just be duplication of work to enter it into a spreadsheet. If you don't print the spreadsheet work, you end up with half the information on file and half in electronic form.

And we get in trouble for that.

StatisticallyChallenged · 19/09/2016 07:57

I think it's easy to be idealistic about not printing or using databases or whatever bit the reality is that many many people are still pretty computer illiterate. They can surf the net, but that's often about it.

I worked for a company which did use access a lot for analysing and storing data. Problem was that they created a huge key man dependency because only one person knew it to anything like the standard that most of the team knew excel. It was a big problem practically. In a small, non data focused business that's even worse as you might be working with people who don't actually like computers at all.

Topseyt · 19/09/2016 14:16

Thereis, we have some clients who do not even have computers. A slowly dwindling number, but they still exist.

Stuff has to be printed for them. No way around that.

In an ideal world we could just totally tech up, but others are not at that stage yet.

nothruroad · 20/09/2016 22:34

I'll come here next time I'm stuck then - you may come to regret mentioning this!

SwedishEdith · 21/09/2016 00:03

PowerPoint is good for creating little films I believe, I'm no good at them - isn't that what all the whizzy functions are for? It's clearly not just for presentations.

Trouble with Excel (and Word) is that you have to use it regularly to get good at it. Does IDEA still exist?

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