Office & productivity software forum: Would you consider ditching Microsoft Word for Google Docs?

"Used MS Office 2003 since 2003" BUT I have had problems opening certain documents from newer versions of MS Office to the point that I've been extremely thankful that I also have Open Office installed, too. I think it quite possible that the reason that you have "never had any trouble" is because those sending you documents realized that those recieving those documents may not have had a newer version of Office and, therefore, saved them as .docs rather than .docxs .

Case in point: A friend once sent me some .docxs which I could NOT open with my MS Word but OO Writer opened them just fine. After I figured out what was going on, I then saved them in .doc format with the OO Writer and then could open them with MS Word, too. (I, initially, had thought that there may have been some sort of corruption of my MS Office installation and was very relieved when I found that that was not the case.) After my friend found out about my problems they simply saved the documents I was working with for them as .docs instead of .docxs in order that we could both deal with them in MS Word. This was so that the formatting in those documents wouldn't be messed up like the slight incompatibility between Writer and Word can cause at certain times.

So, some time when you have the inclination see if you can actually open a .docx with your MS Word 2003.