Monkeys,
I've seen the good piece of advice to print out the book and review it before you hand over the most recent version. Here's some steps beyond that to not only improve your life, but also the person reviewing your book.
1. Print and Check vs. the Old Version
When you print it out, compare the new version to the old, side by side, and put a check mark or a circle on the new version beside each of the changes you made from the old. This should a) ensure that you didn't miss any comments from the old book, b) help during your read through, c) when your associate or VP picks up the book to review, they can quickly see what you've changed, and when they have the old markup beside the new version, it'll save them a tonne of time, and they will probably appreciate that as much as your diligence. Of course, if your last version was shit, and had more red pen then black ink, all the checks are going to be cluttered, so this tends to be best used when comments are less intense, like 10 per page.
2. Read it Out Loud
Take your version, go to one of the side meeting rooms in the office, and read that shit out loud. Lots of stuff can get missed when you're skimming over text you've seen in the last 10 versions. If you read it out loud you'll hear things you might miss. Also helps for syntax, some sentences are just clumsy. Alternative I've heard is paste the text in google translate and let it read to you.
3. Check The Math
This should be self evident, but lots of analysts don't pull out a calculator and check the math in their charts and tables. It doesn't take long, and can separate you from the kids that don't bother to do this. Also, any table you are showing in a book should be simple enough so that an MD can talk a client through it without a calculator.
4. F7 and Double Spaces
Before you print, just get in the habit of hitting F7, and then CTRL F for square brackets or double spaces. You often can't see double spaces on the screen, but MDs with >10 years in the trenches, and a paper copy will always find them.
5. CTRL + H Old Client Names
[Edit: Added] Forgot to add, if you're taking materials from an old book and updating for a different client, do yourself a favour and CTRL+H the name of the last client. Nothing so bad as sending a book with 'Why Blackrock Should Buy this' to KKR. Additionally, if you've got a section of potential buyers, it'll help to remind you to remove the client from the book.
6. Print Your Models
Printing isn't just for PPT, print your models to check them. You should be able to print your model, or at least the outputs, and go through them either by hand or calculator with a pen. It'll amaze you how many problems you can find (in someone else's model, because yours are perfect right).
My advice to anyone going through successive turns of documents is to familiarize yourself with how to run a legal blackline - MS office products have a good built-in tool, and Litera also makes a great product. It's just not always possible to follow the good tips described above - but there is always time to quickly review incremental changes in a blackline and confirm their accuracy.
Also will be appreciated by whoever above you needs to review your work.
Do you guys seriously not use these in banking?
A blackline is a tool commonly used in the negotiation of contracts, but really it is useful for any type of project that is iterative in nature.
It basically takes a "base" document and a "modified" document and produces what is referred to as a "blackline", which is one document that synthesizes the two constituent documents into one document which visualizes the differences. I.e., it shows the changes present in the modified document relative to the base document. https://www.davispolk.com/files/Blackline.JPG</a">Here is an example of what one looks like. It is most commonly used for prose documents, but there are versions designed to work for excel models as well.
For example, in the base document, I might say "This is a file". In the modified document I may have edited that to say "This is a newer file". In the actual blackline produced by the two documents, it will show "This is a newer file", but the word "newer" will be bolded, underlined, and highlighted blue to show that it is new text in the modified version. Similarly, deleted text will show up as red text with strike through.