I would also select from word options the file you want to save.

The only reason you would want to save documents as doc files like in word 2003 or earlier is if you have to run with an older system.

If you really do need to run with an older system or more likely a multios system such as with linux or mac, I would save all word documents as ritchtext rtf format or text as its universal.

Obviously there are limitations with both.

If you want to continue word documents as doc, I would save them as word 97 or even 3.0-4.0 so they would work with other older systems.

The universal access extentions are rtf, html, and pdf.

You are supposed to be able to save with the open data format of open and libreoffice but who knows.

When I ran powerpoints back in 2006 using office xp I saved them from my university as ritchtext so I would get the text.

However the only reason I would probably even bother changing would be linux, as I am unsure if there are docx readers about but libre and openoffice can read those.

The only other reason I'd even contemplate would be space.

Lets face it docx and pdfs can get huge so can doc files, rtf doesn't have this issue and can be opened anywhere.

But again, you would need a reason why.

While I do have access to docx and doc files I only have office here as a way to read my old word 2003 and 97 files which I had for my flatting course and can't easily be read in jarte.

Most of my real work like diaries are done in plane text.

Everythhing else like books are epub and pdf  as well as html.

But then my line of work as a freelance tester puts me in the position where I don't need to write reports of any sort or at least not anything complicated.