Joe Wilcox made an aside in a recent post on Microsoft Watch ...
Today, an editor called to say that he couldn't open a story that I e-mailed to him. He asked if I had saved it in an Office 2007 format. I used Word 2007 to write and save the document, but distinctly recalled using the standard .doc format. Turns out, that Word's auto-recover feature led to a format change. While working on the document, Windows Vista mysteriously shut down. When Vista restarted, I opened Word, which provided a recovered version of the document. I worked in that version and saved it, without realizing that Word 2007 reverted to the default behavior of the new .docx format. Please insert your favorite curse word here: _______. Microsoft is way too heavy-handed about the new file formats. The default setting should be to the older formats, which everybody uses.
If you can't open a Word document, look for the filename.extension and ask the sender for an appropriate format -- .doc (or .pdf) -- if you get one of these unopenable .docx documents.
It's not your fault. You're not a bad person. Don't blame yourself. It's unfair, I know.
It's broken okay? The system. We're doing our best to make it right. A lot of people want it to stay broken. We're working on it as hard a person can.
Whatever you do, do not react by purchasing a new version of Microsoft Office (that's 2007) for $700 or $300 or whatever. That doesn't help the problem. Go and get OpenOffice.org for free (for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux).
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