Techniques for efficiently processing data

Use the right tool for the job

In many cases there is more than one way to process data to generate the information you need. One way may well be more efficient and effective than another.

For example: you have some data you want to sort. You could:
a) create a database, create fields and layouts/reports, enter the data, sort it and print it.
b) use a spreadsheet to enter the data, sort it and print it.

Obviously, the spreadsheet will do the job just as well as the database (i.e. it's just as effective), but it will be far quicker (i.e. more efficient).

Other examples

• if you needed to write an essay, a word processor would be more suitable than a desktop publisher
• to reduce the size of 100 JPG images to thumbnail size and create a web page with the thumbnails linked to the original images, a dedicated utility such Powernailer would take 2 minutes whereas a paint program and a webpage editor would take 2 hours. Trust me: I've been there and done that.
• to check for bad links in a 10 megabyte website manually would take the best part of the summer holidays. Using Dreamweaver's "Check Links Sitewide" command takes about 3 minutes. Which would you prefer?

There's an excellent chance you could improve your efficiency and effectiveness greatly by using the right tool. I'd suggest you visit Nonags to find that piece of freeware you never knew existed and soon cannot live without.

Examples:
XnView - a free picture viewer that can show over 340 graphics formats. Also try Irfanview
Editpad - a free text editor that replaces Notepad and lets you edit any number files of unlimited size. You can do search and replace across hundreds of files at once!

Use the right function for the job

Most application software has many functions that you can't use until you know they exist and when they are valuable.  For example, you may not know that Word has a function to generate automatic Tables of Contents.  If you had to manually find all the headings in a big document, copy them to the first page, look up their page numbers and format the table, it would take hours.  Assuming you have been using Word's heading styles, Word can create a table of contents for you in seconds, and later update if if the headings or page numbers change.

You will only learn what functions are available if you explore, experiment and read.  Some examples follow...

Macros

If you find yourself performing the same set of operations time and time again (e.g. selecting a line of text, changing it to 24pt, changing to Arial bold and italic) consider recording those actions and saving them as a macro.  You can then run the macro any time (you can even attach it to a keyboard shortcut) to carry out those actions automatically.

Macros are stored lists of commands that can be played back later as if they had been typed in again at the keyboard. They are useful if you have to regularly carry out complicated series of commands that you are likely to get wrong if you had to do it manually.

Macros are also useful to automate tasks for Users of Very Little Brain. If you produce a solution that requires the user to manipulate complicated menus or find obscure controls, it is often better to record the actions in a macro, make a nice little button labelled "Click here to <do something complicated>" and attach the macro to the button. When the user clicks the button, the macro does all the hard work.

Batch files are used to automate operating system tasks. For example, if you wanted to go to drive C: and delete all the temporary files in the Windows temporary directory every time you started your computer, you could put this batch file in the 'Startup' folder:

@echo off
c:
cd \windows\temp
del *.tmp
cd\
echo Finished deleting temp files

Templates (e.g. web pages, letters, resumes)

If you often produce the same sort of document, creating a template can greatly enhance your efficiency.  In the template you can put all the standard content, formatting and features that the document needs (including colours, graphics, headers, page numbers, headings etc).  When you need to create the same sort of document next time, you just load the template and fill in the gaps.  Templates are good because they can remind you of the sections that need to be put in, and they can make your documents consistent across time both in terms of appearance and content because they all have the same starting point.

A template is an outline of a document without any details added. Templates are really useful when you often have to produce similar documents (spreadsheets, web pages, letters etc). You can set up the template with the features you want all your documents to have (headings, margins, colours, logos, footers etc) and leave a gap where the details can be added. Each time you want to produce a similar document, you don't have to start from scratch: you load the template, fill in the details of the new document, save it with a different name and voila! it's done.

I use a template for pages on this website: it saves a lot of time and ensures a consistent look and feel across all the pages. You can see my IT Lecture Notes template here.

A violent but well-organised loan shark may have a template for a threatening letter like this:

Fat Jack Loan Sharking Enterprises Breaking legs since 1982 23 Unpleasant St Melbourne 3000 Telephone: 9485 3945 Facsimile: 9485 2940 Email: fatjack@extortion.com.au ABN: 394 059 394 944 Dear .......................... This is a courtesy letter to remind you that your loan of $............. is due for repayment. Should you have trouble with your payment, please contact us to arrange for our loan consultants, Mario and 'Four Fingered Bill' to visit and break your kneecaps, remove your teeth and frighten your pets. Yours faithfully   Fat Jack, Managing Director

To create new professional and thoroughly intimidating letter, all Fat Jack has to do is load the template, fill in the gaps and save the document.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Can save you a lot of time because you don't have to remove your hands from the keyboard to fiddle with the mouse and menus.  Multi-step operations can be replaced with a single keystroke.  Remember many applications let you reconfigure the shortcuts to suit yourself.

Remember, the most common shortcuts are for cutting (CTRL+X), copying (CTRL+C) and pasting (CTRL+V) text - you can use these keys for nearly any text you can see, even when no Edit menu is present.

These functions are built into the very roots of the Windows operating system, so all Windows applications can use them. Whenever you see text, you can select it, press Ctrl+C to copy it, move elsewhere (even a different application) and press Ctrl+V to paste it. If you ever find yourself retyping text, it's a sign you should have used copy & paste. With many programs, you can select text and drag it to a new location with with the mouse. Copy and paste can even be used in file managers to copy files from one location to another.

Another handy key is "Redo" (Ctrl+Y).  Rather than format each heading in this page to "Heading 3" style with Dreamweaver's menus, I typed them all as plain text.  When the headings were finished, I formatted the first one as Heading 3 with the menu, then cruised down the page pressing Ctrl+Y on each heading to redo the formatting.  Easy!

• Shortcut keys (e.g. CTRL+~ to show Excel formulae)

The problem with using mice is they stop you typing. You have to take one hand off the keyboard, find the mouse, aim at a fiddly little icon, click it and move your hand back to the keyboard. That is why power users hate using mice: they can really slow you down and break the flow of writing. Just about every well-written program has shortcut keys that can be used instead of using the mouse and menus.

Here's a menu in Dreamweaver: notice how the corresponding shortcut keys are listed beside the menu functions.

Some shortcuts should be compulsory knowledge: fortunately, most of the fundamental shortcuts are common to all sensible Windows programs:

• SHIFT+any arrow key = select text
• CTRL+C = copy selected text
• CTRL+X = cut selected text (i.e. copy it, then delete it)
• CTRL+V = paste selected text
• CTRL+S = save
• CTRL+P = print
• ALT+F4 = exit program
• CTRL+Z = undo
• CTRL+Y = redo
• CTRL+N = new document
• CTRL+O = open document
• CTRL+W = close document
• ALT+TAB = cycle through running programs in Windows
• F1 = Help

Then each application has its own set of keyboard shortcuts for its specialised functions. To insert an image in Dreamweaver, for example, press CTRL+ALT+I. In Hypersnap, a screenshot utility, I configured it to use CTRL+SHIFT+R to select a region of the screen. Many good programs let you reconfigure the shortcut keys to suit your personal preferences.

Excel is amazing in its repertoire of shortcut keys: there are at least a couple of hundred. Did you know you can press CTRL+TILDE (the ~ key) to switch between normal view and formula view? To do this with the mouse requires 4 mouse clicks! Another neat shortcut is pressing CTRL+' (single apostrophe) to copy the cell in the previous row to the current cell.

Naturally, you don't have to learn every weird and obscure shortcut key in every program you use, but you should get used to learning the ones you could use a dozen times a day.

Wizards

Wizards (they go by different names) are helper applications that let you carry out complex operations with a simple step-by-step question & answer process. Every time you tell the wizard what you want to do, the wizard converts your preference into commands and settings that the application understands.

'Autocomplete' is a feature used by some applications to help you enter data. If you start entering some data (such as a file name, a phrase, an email address or URL, a spreadsheet value), the application might detect that the data has been entered previously and guess that you might be entering the same value. It will complete the data string for you, and you can either accept or reject its suggestion. Alas, autocomplete can be more of a pain than a help, but fortunately it can be turned off.

While wizards are not perfect, they can ofter produce acceptable results with little mental effort on your part.

Re-use of documents, subprograms, modules, classes, #include

Programmers often must do the same job in different programs (e.g. sorting data). It is efficient if they can re-use such programming segments whenever they need to do the same job. The next time they need to sort, they can insert the programming code they used in the previous job. This saves time and effort.

Format painting

A simple but useful feature of some packages, such as Excel and Word. Format painting lets you copy the formatting of some text (text colour, size, style, font etc) and paste the formatting onto other text. It saves a lot of time, and ensures accurate formatting throughout a document.

Using Heading Styles/Table of Contents (MS Word)

Here's a nifty tip. Remember it well and tell your grandchildren about it. Start Word and look at the top left corner of the screen. You'll see this:

Never seen it before? Don't worry - not many people have. But they should. Come sit on my hairy knees and I'll tell you why.

When you are producing a document that uses headings and subheadings (such as an instruction manual for Unit 4 Outcome 1 - hint hint!) it is important that all headings of the same level of importance look the same. You could do it manually (type the heading, select it, bold, size 16, set font to Arial) or you could do it with style: type the heading, click the Style box's arrow and click "Heading 1".

If you do this for every top-level heading, they will all be guaranteed to look alike and the reader can instantly see where a new top-level topic is starting. For subheadings, use the Heading 2 style. For sub-sub-headings, use Heading 3, and so on.

There are four major beauties to this:

1. Formatting the headings is dead easy

2. If you decide to change the formatting of headings, you adjust the style and all headings using that style change automatically.

3. All headings of the same level will always look alike

4. If you need to generate a table of contents (like an index), you can tell Word to use the document's styles as section markers: it will produce an instant table of contents using all your lovely headings and subheadings as topics in the table of contents. How easy is that?

The same principle applies to web pages: use the H1, H2, H3 etc tags to indicate heading styles and your formatting is done for you.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in webpages

CSS let you define your own formatting styles and apply them to many web pages on a site. In a site's style sheet, you can define the look of body text, for example, and use that style in all the web pages in your site. The beauty is that if you ever want to change the appearance of body text in every page, you simple change the style sheet and all text on the site that uses that style will instantly change. It's certainly far better than loading every page on the site and manually changing the formatting of all the text!

Automatic scheduled backups (Word)

Little features like this are worth knowing about. Have you forgotten to do regular backups when you were producing a Word document - and then the computer froze? You can tell Word to do automatic backups of your documents every X minutes, so if the worst happens you have not lost everything.

Using drag and drop between applications

One benefit of the Windows operating system is that most programs are built to handle similar events. If you wanted to drag text from, say, Word into Dreamweaver, you could use copy/paste, or you could just select the text in Word, click it, and drag it into a Dreamweaver window. Similarly, you can drag a file name from any file manager and drop it into the header of a Netscape email window to attach the file to the email. Since each program knows what is going on, they can work together and save you a lot of time and effort.

Note: the tips above can be of significant value when you are working under severe time restraints: such as in SACs! Especially consider the use of templates when producing a hurried website, and use styles when producing a document with many hierarchical headings.

Help file

Don't spend ages fiddling and experimenting when time is short.  If you get stuck with something, press F1 and get help.

Save often

The biggest time-waster is having to repeat work because you destroyed it.  Save often, especially before doing something major or potentially dangerous to your date.  You can always get rid of the excess backups later.

Use sensible file naming

Organising and protecting your information is just as important as creating it. In an organisation with lots of data, not being able to find a file is effectively the same as having the file accidentally destroyed. This is where a sensible and agreed-upon set of rules for file naming and directory structuring is vital. If a dozen people working on a project saved their files willy-nilly any place they wanted with any file name they preferred, it would be impossible for their colleagues to find the information they needed.

One important task in setting up a collaborative project is to agree on basic file naming rules. For example:

• All files for this project must be saved on the network in Q:\OUR_PROJECT
• All orders must be placed in the ORDERS subfolder. The filename must begin with "ORDER-" followed by the code name of the company the order is going to, your initials and then the date of the order in the format DDMMMYY. Since several orders could go to the same organisation on the same day, the file name must end with "NUM" and a 2-digit number indicating the number of the order to that organisation for that day. For example ORDER-STEGGLES-MJK-24FEB02-NUM03.DOC.
• All correspondence must be placed in the CORR subfolder. The filename must begin with "CORR" etc etc
• All database files must be placed in the DB subfolder etc etc
• No filename may contain spaces
• Use a dash "-" to separate segments of a file name.
• Files in progress must end with an "X" - e.g. ORDER-STEGGLES-MJK-24FEB02-NUM03X.DOC.
• Different versions of the same file should be indicated by appending "V" and a version number, e.g. ORDER-STEGGLES-MJK-24FEB02-NUM03-V7.DOC.

Use incremental file naming

Don't keep saving files under the same name.  Increment the name for each save (e.g. historyessay1-v1.doc, historyessay1-v2.doc, historyessay1-v3.doc).  In this way you can revert to older versions if disaster strikes.  You can also use the older versions for authentication to prove how you created it.  Imagine your boss told you to delete part of a document because it wasn't needed any more.  Two days later the boss reappears and says, "Forget what I said - we DO need that sections!"  If you have previous versions, you can easily return to one and retrieve the deleted section.

Learn to touch type

Typing at 50 words per minute with 90% accuracy is going to be a lot more efficient that using "hunt and peck" and fixing errors after every second keystroke.  There are many good and free typing tutors out there.

Use appropriate hardware for the job

Don't try to force underpowered equipment to do hard work.  e.g.   to capture a Britney Spears video from TV and save it as a movie file, you could use a standard PC with a low-level TV tuner card with average capture software. Or, you could use a high-end PC (with truckloads of RAM and a huge, fast hard disk with a sophisticated video capture card and professional capture software). The first system would give a credit-card sized, jerky AVI movie with poor sound and large file size. The latter system would give a TV-size, smooth MPEG movie with flawless stereo sound and a small file size.

Naturally, the system you buy must be tailored to the work you usually do: it would be a waste to buy a professional video editing system if you only want to capture Britney Spears once in your life (and who on earth would want to do that more than once?) Similarly, spending $2000 on a professional multimedia authoring package like Macromedia Director to produce a single webpage animation would indicate you have more money than brains.

RTFM

Read the manual.  Learn and master your tools.  Practise and experiment with them.  Know how to exploit them.  You'll save yourself hundreds of hours of effort and misery.

Also look here for a case study of working efficiently