People often ask me why I am so anti-Microsoft. Interoperability is akin to this, and lack of it greatly restricts the development of computing. Word documents are not backwards compatible . Each new release of Word locks the user into an upgrade path, because once a document has been updated by a later version, it cannot be read by an earlier version. Or worse, it can, but generates incorrect results.
Word documents are bloatware .
The size of word documents is out of proportion to their contents. Word does a shonky job of converting to other formats . The message was originally sent to another member of the department who would have forwarded it on to ALL members of this department but for the fact that a combination of them still insisting on using POP mail and a Mac combined to prevent them from forwarding the message. Surely a link to a web page would be a much more efficient way of distributing large amounts of documentation around this organization. If there is a policy covering this perhaps it is time for an All-Monash message pointing this out.