I found this interesting and detailed document while searching for good ways to explain why sending Word attachments is not good practice, in my opinion. It’s strange how my adaptation of its titles can give you a good idea of the arguments!

1. Word (.doc) format documents require proprietary software
2. There are version problems
3. The data format is proprietary
4. There can be viruses and security problems
5. The size of documents is often bigger than needed
6. Prior version info is kept in modified version of a document
7. Typically attached « wrong » to email
8. Word is not device independent
9. Word isn’t even good at what it is designed for

The full document is available in several formats from http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/no-word/.
Copyright (c) 2001-2002 by Jeffrey Goldberg. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/)