public service message on proprietary file formats

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Many people flick emails with attached Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents to friends, colleagues, even whole mailing lists without a second thought. Most people think this is the most convenient approach - it succeeds in conveying perfectly formatted text that others can read, modify, and it's the industry standard. Right? Well, no, not really. Sending Microsoft Office files as email attachments, especially to people you don't know personally, as in the case of email lists, is very undesirable for both you and them for a number of reasons.

1. Vector for virus distribution
   How much money, time and anguish has virus protection, fear of viruses, and cleanup after a virus infection cost your business? I bet it's heaps. Microsoft Office allows anyone to write "macros" in Visual Basic - these are very powerful and handy, adding customised capabilities to documents. The bummer is, Office let's anyone run them. Macro viruses are some of the most virulent and common viruses going - and they only affect MS Office users. Everyone else is safe as houses. Even if your files are certified clean when you send them, your protection is only as good as your virus checkers, and they're not perfect because they're always playing catchup with the virus writers out there.
2. Unintentionally distributes your personal information
   Word files store information it knows about the person writing a document in that document itself - part of its properties. This information could include your email address, home address, telephone number, etc. Do you want everyone you send Word documents to to have that information? Any reasonably persistent Word user can access it given time and inclination.
   
   Certain clever people with access to very straightforward software tools can also peer into the depths of your Word documents. Because of the way Word saves things, they can actually see things you've typed but then thought you deleted from a document. Ever breath a sigh of relief when you realise you've almost sent something compromising in a document, but notice and remove it just in time? It might not be gone from the document - if someone knows how to look, those earlier versions of the file will still be present.
3. Difficult for many, even most, of your recipients to access
   It would really stink if you spent ages perfecting your prose and formatting, only to find out that your intended recipient(s) didn't even read it! I know that the extra time and hassle required to start up another program in order to read an attachment (when simply sending the message as plain text within the body of the email would do!) is a deterrant for me.
4. Can misrepresent your documents
   Your recipients might not be seeing what you think they're seeing! A word document is not really secure - it can be changed by someone else in subtle ways, and then sent on to someone else as if it was your work - I'm sure anyone can imagine how damaging that could be. If you want to send a document that others will not be able to change consider a) saving your document as PDF (not editable), or put your document up on a website and send people the URL (web address) to view it in their browser.
5. Can make life very difficult for collaborators
   Say you want someone to edit a document you've created. What happens if you've saved it as a Word XP DOC file, and their company's still standardised on Word 97? Ok, you can go to File->Save As->Word 97 format, right? Well, that's only part of the picture. What happens when they send it back to you? Have you noticed how older versions of Microsoft's own software don't interoperate very well - you get formatting errors, or lose bits of your document in the transition? It's a tricky business, isn't it, working with a whole bunch of proprietary file formats, especially because Microsoft really really wants you to upgrade to their newest version (with its "improved" file format, that's changed only enough to make it incompatible with the previous version... Think I'm cynical? Remember, Microsoft's first priority is to maximise shareholder value, not user satisfaction.).

1. Not everyone has a copy of Microsoft Office!
   Your documents are effectively unreadable to those of us who don't - or can't - run Microsoft office. Anyone running any version of Unix or Linux, or any other computer system beside Microsoft Windows and the Mac Operating system, cannot run Microsoft Office because Microsoft haven't created a version of the software for any other platform - they believe it is either not worth their while, or threatens to undermine their Windows monopoly. Furthermore, Microsoft Office is expensive (somewhere between NZ$150-$1500 depending on whether you get the whole suite and whether or not you get heavily discounted "student" versions. Remember, Microsoft has a 90% profit margin on each copy, so they can afford significant discount). For many of us, even if we could use it, it costs significantly more than functionally equivalent packages like the freely downloadable OpenOffice.org - no more scrambling trying to find activation codes when you want to install it, and you can install it on as many computers as you like, guilt free!
2. Mailing list subscribers are forced to "opt out" not "opt in"
   Let's face it, not everyone, especially on mailing lists, is going to be interested in what you might have to say. If you send them an attached Word document, they have to download the whole thing just to decide whether they can be bothered reading it. If they find it's of no interest, they delete it - but only after having paid their ISP for the traffic. Given that it takes about 100k of Word file to convey the same information that is in 1k of text, that starts to add up. It gets on some people's nerves, and, in the case of a mailing list they eventually unsubscribe from the mailing list - thereby costing you a prospective contact. By sending them the document without prior permission, you're forcing them to "opt out" and actively delete something they don't want. That, in email etiquitte, is poor form. The better approach is an "opt in", where you tell people that a document that might be of interest to them is available for download from a website or an FTP server and give them the address to go get it if they want. A less desireable but reasonably acceptable alternative if you have to send formatted text or multi-media content, is to save your Word or Powerpoint document as HTML - which is far more compact and most people can read it directly in their email software. Just remember to attach any images, sound files, and movie files as well as the .HTM (on Windows) or .html (on UNIX/Linux or the Mac) file.

An excellent question - I'm honoured that you've read this far. What you can do is easy: you can use open file formats. These are formats which are described by freely available specifications that can be implemented freely by any number of software packages. Examples of this are HyperText Markup Language (HTML - the language of web pages), eXtensible Markup Language (XML), Rich Text Format (RTF), Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF), the Star Office Writer (SXW - wordprocessor document), Calc (SXC - spreadsheet), and Impress formats (SWI - presentation). Follow their links if you want to see what a file specification looks like.

The bottom line is that every computer understands plain text - it's the lingua franca of the computing world. Every computer system of which I'm aware also supports a web browser that can display standards compliant HTML (so can MS Word) . Similarly, every computer system I know of also supports a wordprocessor that can read and write RTF (including MS Word), and a PDF reader (e.g. Adobe's free Acroread or any number of free alternatives).

I'm pleased to hear it. It's as simple as using the "File->Save As..." menu option to create a document that doesn't annoy or disadvantage anyone. What's more, it reduces your dependence on Microsoft. That means it will be easier for you to start shifting away from them if they don't provide you with sufficient software quality, security, reliability, or value. Many governments around the world are making the switch to open source software systems for all of those reasons.

Suit yourself. Unfortunately, neither I nor a rapidly growing portion of the computing will read what you have to say. Also, make sure you keep around a spare (legal) copy of every version of MS Office you've ever used, along with the appropriate operating system (MSDOS, Win 3.11/ForWorkgroups/95/98/ME/CE/NT3/NT4/2000/XP, MacOS7/8/9/X) along with a 386, a 486, a Pentium, a Mac SE30/LC/G3/PPC, etc. on which they'll all run, because we're now entering what the NZ National Library and the US Library of Congress (among others) are calling the "Digital Dark Ages" - here's a less scholarly explanation here. There are millions of documents with historical significance created in proprietary formats like Microsoft Word 2.0 (for Windows 3.1)'s DOC format which can not be read - have you recently tried to find working Word 2.0 install disks and/or a computer on which they will install successfully? Maybe in a museum somewhere... The alternative, of course, is an open file standard, sort of like the key to the code - just keep that with your document, and someone will always be able to recover you data. In the meantime, thanks for reading and good luck.

You might have noticed that in the above missive, I used the term "legal" (parenthetically in most cases) when describing proprietary software packages. I always advocate following the conditions of software licenses to the letter. Doing anything less is illegal and immoral in that it serves to dilute the rule of law - once you've broken the law once, it's much easier to do it again, and in more serious ways. Rather than flouting the law and using packages with onerous license restrictions illegally as many people do, I advocate simply choosing different software which offers better terms. For example, the fact that I've read significant portions of their End User License Agreement is one of the main reasons that I choose not to give any of my business to Microsoft.