Expedience Blog

Why Professional Implementation Services?

Why Professional Implementation Services?

Most software implementations involve some amount of setup and configuration. So how do you know what the right amount of assistance is right for you?Yes/No DecisionLet’s make this quick – ...
Microsoft Word Running Slow? Is it Lagging? Try This!

Microsoft Word Running Slow? Is it Lagging? Try This!

As proposal writers we spend a lot of time in Microsoft Word.  So If Word becomes slow or unstable it multiplies the time and effort, not to mention frustration, it takes to complete our work.  ...
RFP Content Libraries and the Chaos Dilemma

RFP Content Libraries and the Chaos Dilemma

We often think that content automation will solve the vast majority of our reusability problems when it comes to finding exactly the right answers to our mountain of RFP questions. To some ...
Mysterious Case of the Self-Locking Excel RFP

Mysterious Case of the Self-Locking Excel RFP

“HELP!  Sometimes when I am answering an Excel RFP, a cell suddenly becomes locked, making it impossible to edit it afterward.  What causes this?”  Having an Excel RFP suddenly lock answer cells ...
How to Navigate Data Restrictions on Excel RFPs

How to Navigate Data Restrictions on Excel RFPs

The most frustrating challenge in answering Excel RFPs is not knowing if or what restrictions have been placed on the RFP answer cells and having to rely on Trial-and-Error.   Is there any way ...
Locksmithing for Excel RFPs

Locksmithing for Excel RFPs

I respond to a fair number of RFP’s in Excel. The RFP’s are usually locked so I can only edit the answer cells, but sometimes there are other restrictions too, like not allowing images or not ...
The Awesomeness of AutoCorrect

The Awesomeness of AutoCorrect

AutoCorrect is an automatic editing feature that is often maligned for causing unwanted and sometimes embarrassing word substitutions. It is also a long standing feature of Microsoft Word that ...
Back to the Desktop – Real-Time Co-Authoring in Microsoft Word 2016

Back to the Desktop – Real-Time Co-Authoring in Microsoft Word 2016

The emergence in recent years of the Web-based version of Microsoft Word has led some people to speculate that the desktop version of Word would one day soon become obsolete.  But nothing ...
Pros and Cons of Microsoft Office 365 for Proposal Writers

Pros and Cons of Microsoft Office 365 for Proposal Writers

Real-time co-authoring and online comments make the Web version of Microsoft Word a great tool for collaborating with SMEs and Reviewers.  But sparsity of features makes it untenable as a ...
2 Great Word-to-Email Commands You Never Heard Of

2 Great Word-to-Email Commands You Never Heard Of

Microsoft Word has commands you may never have heard of, since they don't appear on any Ribbons.  In this post we will look at two of these little known commands that make it easy to share ...
Custom Styles 101  for Proposal Writers – 4 Reasons Why Custom Styles Fail

Custom Styles 101 for Proposal Writers – 4 Reasons Why Custom Styles Fail

Almost half of our Styles Survey Respondents reported that ‘Direct Formatting’ was their most common method of changing formatting AFTER  inserting content into a proposal.  Direct Formatting is ...
Custom Styles 101 for Proposal Writers – The Secret Power of Heading Styles

Custom Styles 101 for Proposal Writers – The Secret Power of Heading Styles

Most of the respondents to our Styles Survey report using Custom Styles to format proposals. But even among avid Custom Style users,  the proper use of Custom Heading Styles is debated.  Here is ...
Custom Styles 101 for Proposal Writers – Creating a Custom Style

Custom Styles 101 for Proposal Writers – Creating a Custom Style

Twice as many of our Style Survey Respondents report that they use Custom Styles for their reusable proposal content than those who do not.   If you create your styles correctly, formatting your ...
Custom Styles 101 for Proposal Writers – What is a Style?

Custom Styles 101 for Proposal Writers – What is a Style?

Almost 50% of our Styles Survey respondents who report NOT using Custom Styles cite not understanding how as the primary reason.  Styles are easier than you think and well worth the time ...
Set an Expiration Date for Reusable Proposal Content

Set an Expiration Date for Reusable Proposal Content

 Once you have created a Library of Reusable Proposal Content,  you should next give some consideration to how you will keep track of updates to the content.  This is especially ...
Fields and Links and Controls, Oh My!

Fields and Links and Controls, Oh My!

In a previous post we looked at using Word's built-in Find and Replace functionality to customize our proposal content.  In that example, we used simple highlighted text to serve as ...
Searching Text in Old Proposal Documents Without Opening Each One

Searching Text in Old Proposal Documents Without Opening Each One

Have you ever needed to find something you had written in an earlier proposal but had no idea where to find it? Being able to search across multiple proposals has been a frequently requested ...
Sample Content Library Structures

Sample Content Library Structures

In the previous post we used distinctively formatted labels to organize the content in a master ‘Content Library’ document. In this post we will look at some sample Main Category and Subcategory ...

Innovation & Excellence…

Teams do extraordinary things with Expedience Software

I used several proposal software applications and knew the importance of ease of use. Many of the proposal apps are so complicated that users revolt against the system. Expedience is the easiest proposal automation software that I’ve ever used, and our proposal writers actually love using it!

Vice President of Marketing

Facilities Management