Mara Williams

How to Build a Woodchipper in Excel (Not Really a Woodchipper)

a powerpoint slide in blue and white. A vintage woodcut of tree clippers is on the left side. The title on the right says 'Trim Branches to fit'

When I worked at the City of Eugene in the Equity in Contracting program my job included a lot of forms. Form fillable pdfs, that is. After a few months of being frustrated that I couldn't *do* anything with the data and knowing that The forms themselves were not going to change. I researched ways to speed up getting the information into a spreadsheet. Thus, the woodchipper!

After I presented this method to other City employees, I got an unsolicited catalog for home gardening power tools in the mail.