MSWord .doc Files Are Bad

Do not send MSWord .doc files, neither to me nor to anyone else.

Here's why:

So if you can send normal text instead, do so, because everyone can read normal text email.

If you want to preserve formatting more than you can in plaintext, send RTF or HTML.


In MSWord, you can save any document as RTF by selecting "File" / "Save as..." and choosing "Rich Text Format" From the "Save as type" menu, like so:

Saving as RTF

One feature that I've been using for some time without any trouble (and with a great savings in disk-space used by documents) is having MSWord default to saving as RTF.

You do this by selecting "Tools" then "Options", then select the "Save" tab, and change the "Save Word files as" menu to say "Rich Text Format":

Always save as RTF

Unix users may find this this simple Perl program useful for reading RTF files. It's a very rudimentary tool, but it's a step up from running strings(1). Of course, that's just for a skim-- use AbiWord, OpenOffice, or KWord to really view the file properly.
sburke@cpan.org 2000-12-27