The definition of insanity...

[deathpixie]

Remember months ago when I was venting about the high density filing project and my co-worker who couldn't understand the need for central record keeping? And how B and I wound up going through the whole thing by hand since H's 'records' were out of date and crap and done on Word instead of the Excel spreadsheet provided to her?

Apparently she didn't learn from this - she's been moving files from one of our retiring lawyer's offices and into the high density filing area - without adding them to the spreadsheet we have on the shared drive, or indeed, without putting them into any kind of spreadsheet format at all. So my updates today are already out of date. *headdesks* And when I ask her to give me her list, she doesn't understand the same thing we spent ages explaining to her, that we need a central database to record all of the files on-site, so when the auditors come, we can tell them exactly what we have and where. Considering the sensitive material we have, that's kind of important, you know?

No wonder I feel like I'm going insane - I've explained this very same thing again and again and she still fucks it up.

Comments

[acetal.livejournal.com]

I *love* spreadsheets.

You have my sympathies, Rossi (and my axe!).

Having to reconcile things over and over again and is a real pain in the ass. It's also demoralising and frustrating to spend a lot of time keeping on explaining simple things that people should be familiar with and trying to find new ways to explain as they look at you blankly and continue not to get it.

If she at least put things in columns in Word or separated things with tabs or spaces, it may be possible to transfer it across into a spreadsheet without reentering all the information. Depending on which version of Word you're using, it'd be under something like Insert -> Table -> Convert Text To Table
Highlight the data you want to convert into a table, select Convert Text To Table as per above, make sure the number of columns and rows is correct and what it uses to pick what to separate data into cells by. If it's spaces, then select Other and do a space. Once you've got your table set up, copy and paste it into Excel.

Might not help, but is useful to know anyway.

[deathpixie]

I finally got to see what format she has and it's just a Word document. Without half the information needed (like shelf location, year, that sort of thing). Fortunately, it's only one file on the shelf, so she's added it to the spreadsheet now and hopefully she'll know better once her lawyer retires and we clear out his office.