Wed 23 Feb 2011 11:10
Exchanging files in docx format may lead to problems
When Microsoft came out with Office 2007, the default save format for
files was switched to a new format based on XML. For Microsoft Word,
for example, instead of files being saved in .doc format by default,
they were now saved in .docx format. If you use Microsoft Word 2007 or
2010, you'll notice that when you save a Word document, it saves
it as document.docx instead of document.doc.
Unfortunately, now there seems to be an incompatibility between how Word 2007 and Word 2010 interpret .docx files. Apparently, possibly depending on how one's printer is configured, when users of Word 2007 and Word 2010 share files in .docx format, some spaces (seemingly random) between words in the file are dropped.
This has been reported on various places on the net including the CBS Interactive Business Network, cNET.com, and Microsoft's own user forums.
For now, I suggest using the older .doc format for users of different versions of Microsoft Word to exchange documents. For publishing documents, instead of using a native Word format, I suggest using a widely-used open document standard like PDF. CutePDF is a useful free Windows printer driver that lets you create PDF files from any Windows application by simply printing to a CutePDF printer.