Keeping software a current affair
Failing to keep your software up to date can have unforeseen and sometimes serious consequences.
In the last stages of a recent project our client sent an updated version of a document we had been working on together over several weeks. It was a Microsoft Word file with tracked changes turned on, so I could see that in this latest iteration the client had manually inserted spaces between various words in the document.
So, what happened to the spaces? At some stage between the previous file I had sent and this one these spaces had been deleted, so that two words became one. The result was a document littered with random instances of ‘alwayscurrent’, ‘localknowledge’ and ‘cooperativerelationships’.
As editors, it obviously doesn’t look good if we’re sending clients files full of typos. What’s more, the document was a tender for a large government contract. Errors like these wouldn’t reflect well on our client either, particularly when it came to the evaluation panel’s assessment of the submission.
What was particularly puzzling was that we hadn’t encountered this problem with any of the previous versions of the document.
A quick search of online forums revealed that this was a known bug with Word, one that could be resolved by installing the latest Office Service Pack. As it turned out, the client had been working on the document at home, on a computer without the latest Service Pack installed.
In this instance, we were able to resolve the problem quickly: our client updated their software and submitted the final version of the tender without the problem recurring.
Whatever software applications you use for your business, make sure you always install the latest patches and bug fixes to avoid problems like this one.
When sending the final version of a document to a client or prospect, always open it for one last ‘sanity check’ just before sending it.
Finally, if possible, use a ‘locked’ format such as Portable Document Format (PDF) so that the document will always look the same on any computer.
