After an extensive search and lots of testing and research and contact with
MS it seems that compatibility options are causing significant problems.

I have made use of the "disable features introduced after Microsoft Word 97"
option in templates and VBA to stop my users putting anything in the
documents (in Word 2002/2000) that will make them incompatible with other
users. Unfortunately this seems to A) Not always work B) Cause bugs.

Users have been able to make changes in Word 2002 and save without getting
any non-compatibility warnings.

Bug 1) When those documents are then opened and SaveAs is used to copy the
file elsewhere, the original file still has a lock file (the system file with
the ~$ilename.doc format) and, so, cannot be removed. It stays like that
until the Word application closes down.

Bug 2) When pasting pictures.drawings into tables a Word2002 document with
the Word97 compatibility settings, it (depending on the source and the paste
options used) renders the pictures as if the table isn't there (i.e. locates
them as if they are anchored to the nearest paragraph, not the table cell)

Bug 3) When editing pictures that somehow have managed to be successfully
located in a table cell, Word2002 converts the piture to a drawing object
which it forces into a canvas which fails to locate correctly and will not go
back into the cell (related to Bug 2)

Does anyone have good workarounds for these issues? I've found some success
by just turning off the compatibility, though, due to a known bug with the
compatibility options not sticking (sometimes they seem to behave as a
document 'level' setting, sometimes as an application level setting) this is
far from ideal and it doesn't always work. There seems to be some problem
with tables that were created with compatibility set even if, subsequently,
compatibility is switched off...