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January 7, 2009

When Collaboration Gets Too Messy for Word: There Is A Solution

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Do you ever get the feeling of sorrow when you see someone in pain.

Raise your head a bit and look over the cubicle at that colleague of yours, at about 6:30pm in the evening trying to put together comments received on a document from 3 different people. You'll see pain.

Sure the document could have been sent from one person to the next so that Microsoft Word's track changes could easily be used. But if the same document is edited by different people, they'll just email back the changes in different documents.

Not all the time can you use a hosted version of the document such as Google Docs, which makes collaboration easier, sometimes you need the full functionality of Word.

One solution, that appears to work quite well, is by Swedish company, TextFlow. This tool lets you drag and drop changed documents into it. It then puts all the changes into ONE document, with colors for the changes - just as if everyone had used track changes on ONE document.

Try TextFlow out for yourself or first check out the video.

Although hosted applications, wireless computing and other technologies are all useful - they really are - small applications that enhance productivity are VERY important.

Another neat tool is Texter, which is distributed by LifeHacker. This free tool lets you type in abbreviations and expand them to anything. You can type DOG and once configured Texter will expand it to reach Dig Old Gears - or whatever.

One more so useful tool that I use dozens of times per day is Anaagram. This applet lets you easily capture information and dump it into Outlook or other applications. If you often copy and past information, like addresses, into Outlook, Anagram will save you so much time.

As your business grows, do look at the big picture. But always remember that the little things in life are also important and help boost productivity even more.

tags: collaboration , textflow , world | 1 comments

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