RE: formatting a response to an RFP

["Mandy Wells" <mwells -at- valadeo -dot- com>]

Dan Emory wrote:
> Often, an RFP includes instructions on how the response must be
> formatted and organized. Are you sure you have the complete RFP, or
> did someone else tear it apart first and deal it out. If that happened,
> demand to see the whole RFP.
>

No--I've got the whole RFP and all they want is some happy talk about the
company and how we plan to deliver our product; no requirements for format.


>
> If, however, the RFP has multi-level bulleted lists
> as you describe, and these bulleted items delineate requirements,
> then I'd suggest that you convert the bulleted items to
> multi-level numbered headings in your response.
>
Oy, I tried that for internal discussions, but their RFP was so crazy-nested
that I ended up with numbers like C.1.D.III.2.b.5th-xi, and then
occasionally had to use bullets because I couldn't get any more numbers into
the Number list formatter.  And then there were the parts of the document
where the bullets went all goofy because they hadn't used any styles on
them...<snarky vent>apparently there were no semi-intelligent orangutans who
knew how to do styles in Word available to type it up. </snarky vent>
My idea to reply to their requirements is to keep all their headings and
keep their requirements in the order of the original document, and create
Convert Text to Table to turn the goofy bullets into table cells. I'm
playing with this now and it's looking pretty coherent, but I haven't
started to add our comments yet.

Tiptoeing through the tables,
Mandy