The paperless era has arrived

    I almost missed it.
    Over the last two years, there's been a gradual and almost "sneaky" evolution in my business communications. I can truly say that I've been working with several clients, now, in a totally paperless environment.
    Printing things out now seems somewhat rare for a lot of the work that I do. I still like to print a paper copy for ultimate security and comfort in proofing. But, ultimately, it gets delivered to the shredder and nowhere else.
    Don't get me wrong — I'm not paperless with everything. But some of the businesses I deal with have truly embraced the ability of our latest electronic tools to make paper obsolete.
    Twenty-five years ago, we all were told that computers were taking over and the era of the paperless office was upon us. Yeah, right.
    Instead, back then, computers actually caused significant additional paper use by orders of magnitude. We'd crank out dozens of sheets of paper before we were satisfied with the result. Then we would generate countless copies for not only the recipient, but also gobs of paper for files and just about everybody we could hand a sheet to.
    Early “converter” programs to switch files from one computer to another were about all we had. They didn't work.
    E-mail in the mid-'90s changed a lot of that. We were still having problems exchanging files, though, since there were so many computer brands, different types of software and software formats. We didn't really have a good way to get files attached to those e-mails in a easy way that worked.
    Of course, all that has changed. It doesn't matter if you have a Macintosh or a PC or what software you are using. Photo (.jpg) files and portable document format (.pdf) made life much more universal. And the whole world has switched to a standard word processing, database, spreadsheet and presentation format. So we can all exchange files quite easily.
    Another quiet thing has also happened. We don't fax hardly at all anymore. You don't have to start with a piece of paper or end with one. If you need to fax, you might as well scan it and attach it to your e-mail. The quality can be better, and the recipient can print it out only if they need to.
    The same thing goes with paper correspondence that you used to mail. A word-processing file is easier and faster. No paper.
    Have a piece of paper you need to retype? Don't. Just use your handy-dandy all-in-one printer/scanner/fax and scan it to the optical-character-recognition software that came with the printer. It works very well, compared to what we used to have. And you don't have to retype it.
    So how do you live without a file cabinet? Make it electronic. In fact, put a little private (but secure) Web site up for folks you work with, in or out of the office.
    Electronically post everything in folders such as correspondence, studies, photos, artwork files — anything you all work on together. Give your work group the password. It's simple and fast. Just make sure you have multiple backups.
    Because it's online you have remote access to work files when you're at home or on the road. Just get online and sign into your private file cabinet. You don't need to make special private networks to access hard drives all over the office if you're electronically organized.
    Your printer, fax and copier may start to gather a little dust. But in many ways, that's good.
    Just don't scare yourself when you open that old metal file drawer and find there's nothing there.
    It's all just someplace else.