I often get asked by people to send my resume to them in Microsoft Word (.doc) format. I then need to take a considerable amount of time to explain why I cannot do this, and why I wouldn't want to even if I could. Consequently, I decided to put this web page together in order to provide an explanation of my position. Hopefully this will provide two benefits:
One problem with MS Word documents is that they are not cross-platform. Users not running Microsoft Windows and the latest version of Microsoft Office cannot view all Word documents. Users on other operating systems such as Linux and Mac OS may not be able to easily view or edit these documents.
While software does exist for some non-Windows platforms to work with Word documents, the software is often not free (MS Office for Mac, Corel Office for Linux) or is not perfect at reading Word documents (Appleworks, Star Office, Koffice, etc.) Even users running Windows may not have MS Office (maybe they can't afford it?) I have family members in this situation who have sent me Word documents to convert, even though they know I don't run Windows!
Microsoft Word documents are notorious for propagating macro viruses which have plagued many companies and individuals over the past few years. Providing security advice and recommendations is an important part of my work, and I wouldn't be setting a good example by supporting the use of such blatantly insecure software as Microsoft Office.
The MS Word document format is a proprietary (or closed) format. While there is some documentation on the format it is incomplete and often inaccurate. A lot of work have been put into reverse engineering the format to allow other software to work with these documents, but these efforts have not been 100 percent successful. To make matters worse, Microsoft continues to change the format with each revision of their software.
Storing data in a non-open format can be very dangerous as it may be difficult or impossible to access this data in as little as 5 to 10 years in the future. Even Microsoft Office cannot open sufficently old MS Word documents. For anyone that needs to store data for any significant period of time (Banks, Financial Institutions, Newspapers, etc.) the use of an open format for any data they store is critical. Of course, proprietary formats are also a great barrier to historians.
Other document formats can provide much greater flexibility. For example, I create most of my documents in TeX, which is an ASCII format text-markup language very popular in academia and with publishers. It can then be used to generate HTML, PDF, Postscript, and other forms of cross-platform documents. This means the file can be easily edited by any text editor. Also, since the original master is text-based it can be easily maintained under version control using tools such as rcs or cvs. Of course, since it's ASCII-based, I don't have to worry about it being unreadable in 10 years!
If the above reasons seem far too altruistic, let me turn to a more practical reason. I don't run Windows (I prefer Linux) and therefore I cannot run Microsoft Office, so I can't create Word documents.
People who use UNIX (including Linux and the BSD flavours) every day tend to understand it better and have higher skill levels than purely "9 to 5" UNIX users. Note to headhunters: Many employers filling UNIX positions do not want to receive resumes in Word format. They normally prefer PDF or Postscript (or ASCII) and will often dismiss Word resumes out-of-hand. After all, would you want to hire a UNIX admin who can't even write their resume using UNIX?
For another view on the use of Word documents in email, you want want to take a look at Martin Vermeer's article on the topic.