issues with Microsoft Word 2003 NOT properly opening older Word documents, in most cases it not only screwed up the format it corrupted the files too - thank heavens for back up procedures. On trial and error investigation I found it could handle Word 95 and Word 97 and Word 2000 files, but nothing prior to that. Documents saved in Word 6, Word 2a, and earlier were destroyed by Word 2003. Later, a friend found that his Word 2007 did the same to his Word 95 files.

At the time I had a huge number of Word documents that I was legally required to keep in their original form for many years - contract negotiations that had to be kept for the life of the contract and 8 years after that. Some of the contract being ten years, some fifteen years. Most have now expired and I got rid of them, but it showed me how MS have changed the internal workings of MS Word format code and that stuff from different versions are NOT fully compatible with all the other versions.

I now use Libre Office and it gives me an option to save in a variety of MS Word formats, and when I do save in the one I know the other person uses they have reported no troubles using the document. And I've had no troubles with viewing and using what they send back, except for the Changes info from a person using Word 2010.