versions (Word 97, Word 2000, Word XP, Word 2003, and a couple of Mac
versions), and you'll see what a mess you can make with Word doc files.
As longtime high-tech pundit John Dvorak pointed out in his PC Magazine
column,
get something new. This code can no longer be fixed."
format. One reason is that files are extremely large--it seems like Microsoft
stores the design specs and blueprints for the Titanic along with your text.
These files are often many orders of magnitude larger than ordinary text files.
You can spend a lot of time sending or receiving these files over a network,
and they eat up more disk space than they should.
macros for modifying their Word documents. Excel offers the same feature.
But since Word and Excel let you save the macros along with the documents,
and since it is possible to hide a virus in the macro code, these documents
could easily be turned into Trojan horses carrying viruses. The code can be
set to execute as the document opens. In fact, Word documents are now the
most common carrier for viruses.
Word opens a document, your computer could catch a virus--whether you use Word's
File menu, click on a Word document on the desktop or in a file list, or click on an
email attachment that happens to be a Word doc file. Open your browser's preferences,
and set the helper application for .doc files to something other than Word. You might
want to register WordPad as the helper application for a Windows system. Otherwise,
choose an alternative to Word such as WordPerfect or OpenOffice.org Writer, both
described in this chapter.
forgot to remove tracked changes from a Word doc that identified their previous
defendant, Bank of America, and demonstrated the litigation possibilities of Word
templates. The press loved it; the SCO Group's credibility was ruined.