Administrative message for AcWriMo spreadsheet

Last weekend was spent leisurely at home. At first I planned some articles reading during the weekend but at the back of my mind, I knew I wouldn’t go through with it. I’m not proud of my lack of determination. At the end, I spent all my time relaxing at home and watching TV. Not a surprise as I have been spending all my weekends like that since the day I submitted my dissertation. Although I was not productive during the weekend, I did check on the AcWriMo spreadsheet very often. Being the owner of the spreadsheet, I feel it’s my responsibility to make sure the spreadsheet’s working fine at all time. When I first looked at it on Saturday, I was quite shocked to see it had been sorted but I didn’t realize immediately that some of the rows had been affected after the sorting. Actually I thought it’s a good idea to have the list sorted according to our names but I didn’t sort it myself because I was worried others would be shocked too. I also found some had even remembered their row numbers. However, as the list of participants grows longer, it proves to be a chore to just find our rows for daily update. Honestly, never had I thought the list would grow to be that long and never had I foreseen that maintaining it would start to be difficult. Of course, I’m glad that many have decided to join the spreadsheet (we still have more new joiners every day) and many have told me how useful it has become to their productivity.

After the sorting over the weekend, I believe some are happy with the new sorted spreadsheet but I did receive some comments that their rows were inconsistent or went missing. To avoid further confusion or shock and to make maintaining the spreadsheet easier, the first thing I did on the Monday morning was to fix the sorting. It was not easy at first, especially to find the missing row. I had to retrieve the revisions history and actually looked at each version one by one to see what had been edited. Finally I found the missing row and put it back to the spreadsheet. I also checked on each row after the sorting to see if all were consistent. Then I found a few rows were messed up badly. Some cells’ information were missing. Again I had to check the revisions history and found the problem. These affected rows were due to the previously merged cells on the spreadsheet. After the sorting, the merged cells continue to stay and they overlapped with other rows. I had finally fixed them and asked the owners of those rows to check. These fixing tasks alone nearly took me an hour to solve but I was glad to be able to solve them.

 

Another initial problem with this sorted spreadsheet was I wouldn’t know who were the new joiners. I used to be able to check all the new joiners at the end of the spreadsheet and add their Twitter handles to the list. The sorting over the weekend blended in all the new joiners to the existing ones. So I actually went to each row to check and find all the new joiners to be added to the list. Took me another half an hour. At the end of this exercise, I decided to leave a message on the top of the spreadsheet to inform everyone that sorting will be done at least twice a day by me alone. New joiners are to leave their information at the next available empty row so I can easily find them and add them. After adding them, I can sort them accordingly and I have also informed everyone in my message that they should find their new sorted position after a day. So far everything seems to be working fine. Of course, I have been monitoring it closely every day since Monday.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who have decided to participate in AcWriMo and signed up in the spreadsheet. It’s really amazing seeing everyone’s daily progress update. Very inspiring! If you are new joiners who signed up with AcWriMo recently, I welcome you to our biggest online event for this year. I’m sure you will find this online event most fun and productive. Thank you to Linda A. ‏@VaiBabe who admitted that she was the one sorted the spreadsheet due to the difficulty to scroll through the long list. Don’t worry, I really thought the idea’s great and now everything looks very organized and easier for all to find their rows. Thank you to all who have been considerate and patience with me while reorganizing the spreadsheet and fixing problems. Your patience is very much appreciated. If you have any problem at all with the spreadsheet, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Wish everyone another wonderful productive week of AcWriMo!