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edenfallingThing I taught myself how to do today: make fillable fields in Word documents.
This is not something I ever previously had a need to know, though I have worked extensively with such documents -- someone else in the office (usually Mom Boss) has always put the document together before sticking it in the shared office drive.
But! Downtown leases never used to have language about what happens to security deposits if a tenant switches from one apartment to a new apartment (and especially not if the apartments are in different buildings). Apparently Ms. Busywork had a Word document of some sort that she hoarded on her own hard drive, and which was appended to specific leases as needed. I asked Ms. Random Numbers how to handle the security deposit for a tenant who's switching to an apartment with a lower rent, and she told me to recreate that form and append it to the new lease.
So I recreated the form. It was annoying and took significantly longer than it really should have, which is partly because a lot of the easily googleable information about Word fillable fields is based on older versions of Word and I didn't realize that until I'd already mucked up one test file beyond repair. (This is why I use test files!)
Once I had a working version, I emailed everyone to be like, "Hey, I have recreated this form, please look it over and see if it needs any edits (particularly with regard to legal language, because the original document was awful and I'm not sure my tweaks fixed the issues)."
Mom Boss promptly responded with something to the general effect of, "Why is this not in your base lease language already? Collegetown leases have language about what happens to security deposits in switch leases baked into the standard text on page one."
So I went back and checked the new downtown lease (there was no point checking the old one. the old one was HORRIBLE, ran like 14 extraneous pages, and required a signature on EVERY PAGE instead of one at the end) and nope, there is still no language about what happens to security deposits in switch leases. *headdesk* Apparently we missed that when trying to reconcile the Collegetown (sensible! efficient!) lease template with the old downtown (horrible!!!!!) lease template last fall.
I have asked Mom Boss to send me the Collegetown language so I can edit the downtown lease templates. By this point, I am quite confident in my ability to tweak complicated documents with lots of fillable forms. *wry*
(Tangentially, I taught myself how to make fillable .pdf files a few year back for one particular project, promptly forgot all the details because I didn't use the skill again for ages, and then had to relearn again this past fall in order to complete some new projects. Fortunately I already knew there was a pretty simple method, and it was much less frustrating to figure out the second time around.
...
Someday I am going to encounter a reason to learn PowerPoint. I am not looking forward to that.)
---------------
In other new computer skills news, last night I created a Doodle account and today I created my first Doodle poll, as part of trying to schedule a church Board of Trustees meeting. There were some bumps in the process! But it seems to have worked out all right in the end.
Three cheers for the old "bash a few options around and see what works" approach?
Honestly, that's how I figured out 90% of what I can do with my cell phone -- scroll through menus and poke around and see if anything I try does something useful. You never learn anything if you don't either ask/search or just mess around. :)
This is not something I ever previously had a need to know, though I have worked extensively with such documents -- someone else in the office (usually Mom Boss) has always put the document together before sticking it in the shared office drive.
But! Downtown leases never used to have language about what happens to security deposits if a tenant switches from one apartment to a new apartment (and especially not if the apartments are in different buildings). Apparently Ms. Busywork had a Word document of some sort that she hoarded on her own hard drive, and which was appended to specific leases as needed. I asked Ms. Random Numbers how to handle the security deposit for a tenant who's switching to an apartment with a lower rent, and she told me to recreate that form and append it to the new lease.
So I recreated the form. It was annoying and took significantly longer than it really should have, which is partly because a lot of the easily googleable information about Word fillable fields is based on older versions of Word and I didn't realize that until I'd already mucked up one test file beyond repair. (This is why I use test files!)
Once I had a working version, I emailed everyone to be like, "Hey, I have recreated this form, please look it over and see if it needs any edits (particularly with regard to legal language, because the original document was awful and I'm not sure my tweaks fixed the issues)."
Mom Boss promptly responded with something to the general effect of, "Why is this not in your base lease language already? Collegetown leases have language about what happens to security deposits in switch leases baked into the standard text on page one."
So I went back and checked the new downtown lease (there was no point checking the old one. the old one was HORRIBLE, ran like 14 extraneous pages, and required a signature on EVERY PAGE instead of one at the end) and nope, there is still no language about what happens to security deposits in switch leases. *headdesk* Apparently we missed that when trying to reconcile the Collegetown (sensible! efficient!) lease template with the old downtown (horrible!!!!!) lease template last fall.
I have asked Mom Boss to send me the Collegetown language so I can edit the downtown lease templates. By this point, I am quite confident in my ability to tweak complicated documents with lots of fillable forms. *wry*
(Tangentially, I taught myself how to make fillable .pdf files a few year back for one particular project, promptly forgot all the details because I didn't use the skill again for ages, and then had to relearn again this past fall in order to complete some new projects. Fortunately I already knew there was a pretty simple method, and it was much less frustrating to figure out the second time around.
...
Someday I am going to encounter a reason to learn PowerPoint. I am not looking forward to that.)
---------------
In other new computer skills news, last night I created a Doodle account and today I created my first Doodle poll, as part of trying to schedule a church Board of Trustees meeting. There were some bumps in the process! But it seems to have worked out all right in the end.
Three cheers for the old "bash a few options around and see what works" approach?
Honestly, that's how I figured out 90% of what I can do with my cell phone -- scroll through menus and poke around and see if anything I try does something useful. You never learn anything if you don't either ask/search or just mess around. :)
