Let’s Put an End to Stupid Forms

cc licensed flickr photo shared by voss

You would think in an advanced electronic era that has brought us tools to broadcast our breakfast dilemmas and make our rock and roll dreams come alive that we might perhaps… maybe… improve the collection of information via @$#%#ing paper forms.

There is no excuse for wasting my time with bad forms.

I am putting my paw down on these offenses:

1. Badly Designed Paper Forms My handwriting is already bad enough for me to masquerade as an MD, but forms that do not allow appropriate space, ones that have me repeat information already entered, or request information hardly relevant is a huge waste. My time is wasted chicken scratching in tiny boxes and some poor staff person’s time is wasted trying to interpret what I wrote and re-enter it into some computer system.
2. Fax Me That Electronic Form I find alot of forms sent by email or downloaded form web sites that require me to…. print them out (waste paper), fill them out by hand (see #1 above), and then fax them or mail them back in (more waste). If you send it to me digitally, let me return it digitally (see below).
3. A Word Document With Lines for Items is Not a Form. I still get a lot of requests for information that come in the form of a Word document that someone labored to make look pretty with lines for me to…. write in by hand (see #2). If I even try to edit the form in Word, it becomes a jumbled mess almost useless as I replace those single entered underlines. I don;t want to edit your document, I want to type in information. There is a virtually unknown feature in MS Word that allows you to make documents act like forms; e.g. I can only edit in areas the author defines. I learned how to do this in 2002! And have all the details on how to do this rusting away in the Maricopa Learning eXchange http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/slip.php?item=383.

   What I want to do is type in the info you need and then be able to return the document by email / file sharing etc. This can be done without wasting a shred of paper or touching a fax machine. This can be done today.

4. Got PDF? If you are serious about collecting information in a structured form, for *******’s sake, get a copy of Acrobat Pro, and generate a PDF with editable form fields. It’s not that hard; the end user (me) can do this with the free Acrobat Reader, and you get back forms in an exact format was you design.
5. Skip the document, go web Depending on the nature of the information collected, just create a web form to collect it- be it any number of free tools or even the dead easy Google Forms

I have zero expectation much will change, so I am keeping my printer loaded with paper and the fax machine on standby for the next stupid form I am asked to fill out.

 Share this barking on social media

If this kind of stuff has value, please support me by tossing a one time PayPal kibble or monthly on Patreon