Clone Sheep, Not Spreadsheets
In an unprecedented turn of events, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics ruled that cloning sheep and other livestock should be considered legal in light of 
the scandalous, unrestricted cloning of spreadsheets by millions of individuals in offices across the globe. In a similar judgment, the Department of Homeland Security has issued a ban on emailing any spreadsheet attachments during periods when the national threat level color is anything but green.
Now if any of that were true, we would all be in a lot of trouble. We are all guilty of cloning spreadsheets via email. It’s what we have done for years, but when you look at the inefficiency it actually creates, you’ll rapidly reconsider your Excel collaboration process. Let’s illustrate the point with a simple math question…
Question: When one (1) person emails a spreadsheet to two (2) people, how many copies of the file actually exist?
Now before I disclose the answer, let me inject a personal statement: Cloning spreadsheets is dangerous, unnatural, and is not the original intension of the creator. If the creator had intended for his or her spreadsheets to be cloned, he or she would have made it that way from the beginning. Plus when you clone a spreadsheet, who knows what untraceable mutations are introduced to each generation of the spreadsheet? If we as business people are not careful, it will only be a short matter of time before we truly reap the consequences of cloned spreadsheets. It has already happened, but it is not too late to change the behavior of our workplace society.
Thanks for indulging my soapbox moment. On to the answer…
Answer: One person emailing one spreadsheet to two people creates 6 copies. (1 original + 1 in the Sent folder + 1 in Inbox A + 1 in Inbox B + 1(x2) in each recipients’ Temp folder or My Documents once it has been opened.) The numbers get really fun once those recipients edit their versions and send them back via Reply All.
Cloning spreadsheets is a serious dilemma. It wreaks havoc on conventional beliefs and begs the question, “Just because we have the technology to clone spreadsheets, should we allow it to continue?”
