Don't Air Your Digital Laundry: Moving Beyond Word, PowerPoint, and PDFs
25 Jun 2024
25 Jun 2024 by Luke Puplett - Founder
“like shipping someone a silkscreen and expecting them to print it out”
In our fast-paced digital world, it's time to address the elephant in the room: our continued reliance on outdated file formats for everyday communication. Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and unnecessary PDFs are the digital equivalents of using a fax machine in the age of instant messaging.
Word: The Source Code of Print
Word documents were designed as source code for printed materials. Sending one is like shipping someone a silkscreen and expecting them to print it out. It's an unnecessary intermediate step that assumes the recipient has the right tools and software versions. Moreover, these documents often suffer from format inconsistency, with what looks perfect on one device turning into a jumbled mess on another.
PowerPoint: Low-Density Information Theater
PowerPoint files suffer from similar issues, with the added drawback of low information density. They're essentially the source code for the background art of a spoken presentation. When shared without context, they often fail to convey complete ideas, leaving readers to fill in the blanks. Additionally, PowerPoint presentations are particularly cumbersome on mobile devices, where their fixed layouts and formatting don't adapt well to smaller screens, leading to frustrating zooming and scrolling experiences.
The Unnecessary PDF Epidemic
Perhaps most baffling is the trend of embedding simple text into PDFs instead of using email bodies. This practice, oddly common in primary schools and some businesses, adds an extra layer of complexity for no real benefit. It forces recipients to download and open a separate file just to read a message that could have been conveyed directly in the email.
HTML: The Forgotten Solution
Interestingly, we've had a better solution for decades. HTML was invented specifically for one-to-many inter-organizational communications. It's flexible, adaptable to different screen sizes, and universally readable. Yet many organizations continue to overlook this powerful, built-in capability of our digital communication systems.
“it's a signal that your back office might be a chaotic mess of Outlook emails and attachments”
Airing Your Business Laundry
Using Office documents for communication isn't just inefficient—it's a signal that your back office might be a chaotic mess of Outlook emails and attachments. This reliance on outdated formats reveals several underlying issues within your organization:
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Untrained Staff: It suggests that employees may not be well-versed in modern, efficient communication tools and practices.
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Lack of Investment in Proper Tools: It highlights a potential gap in your investment in up-to-date software and collaboration platforms.
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Inability to Post Content Online: If you're sending out Word documents or PDFs instead of sharing content directly on your website, it indicates a lack of capability in managing and publishing digital content effectively.
Moreover, these files often carry hidden metadata that can inadvertently expose sensitive business information, including:
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Author names and edit history
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Company names and internal file paths
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Comments and tracked changes you thought were deleted
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Template information and custom properties
By sharing these documents, you might inadvertently be airing your business's "dirty laundry." Competitors and clients could glean insights into your internal processes, organizational structure, or even confidential information from seemingly innocuous files. Additionally, version inconsistencies can lead to embarrassing situations where outdated information or internal notes accidentally make their way to external stakeholders, posing unnecessary risks to your business's professional image and data security.
This reliance on outdated formats not only compromises your efficiency but also betrays the truth of your operation, revealing a disorganized and outdated approach to digital communication.
Moving Forward
In an era of cloud-based collaboration tools, responsive web design, and mobile-first communication, clinging to these outdated formats is holding us back. It's time to embrace more flexible, accessible, and truly digital-native formats for our day-to-day communications.
The future lies in platforms that offer real-time collaboration, universal accessibility, and format fluidity. By moving beyond the limitations of Word, PowerPoint, and unnecessary PDFs, we can streamline our workflows, enhance collaboration, and ensure our messages are received as intended—on any device, without unnecessary downloads or software requirements.
Let's make 2024 the year we finally bid farewell to these digital relics and embrace the full potential of modern, web-based communication tools.
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