Over the course of an average day, I can’t tell you how many Microsoft Word attachments I get in my e-mail box.
I’m not a fan of Word attachments. For one, the files are huge, and take a long time to open on my aging work computer. If my virus scanner is running at the same time, forget about it. I can get a cup of coffee, check my snail mail box and make a few copies before the file opens. Furthermore, if I get enough Word attachments, it can fill my e-mail inbox and cause other e-mails to bounce back to the sender. Not a good situation.
Need further reasons to stop sending Word attachments? Tristan Miller has written a very useful article about why Word attachments are no good, and provides helpful alternatives to sending them.
When sending e-mail to journalists (or anyone outside my organization), I prefer good ol’ plain text format, because any e-mail reader can open it, the file size is small, and it can be copied-and-pasted into a page layout program without any weird formatting issues. Alternatives to plain text each have drawbacks.
It’s comforting to know sometimes the easiest way really is best.
Edit: I should clarify that when collaborating on a project, Microsoft Word works pretty well, as long as everyone knows to expect Word attachments.
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