[Peter T. Daniels]

On Oct 15, 12:02*pm, Tom Adams wrote:
On Oct 15, 11:46*am, "Peter T. Daniels" wrote:

Perhaps it's more that there's no security to a .doc(x) file -- anyone
can change it practically at will --, as opposed to a .pdf?

On Oct 15, 9:38*am, Tom Adams wrote:

I get the impression that .doc files can't be used for electronic
delivery because some of the features (custom autotext, styles) are
not in the .doc file.

Is that true?-

I am not talking about security.

I'm not talking about encryption and such, but simply about preserving
the content (which anyone can alter) and formatting (which depends on
the default printer selected on the computer that opens the file -- if
recipient has a different default printer, then your pagination may
well come out different). Not to mention, if recipient doesn't have
exactly the same fonts, Word will make a substitution, and sometimes
what it chooses for substitution can be very odd indeed.

In Word 2007 you can mark a compatibility mode document as final. They
imply its readonly. *But, if you have custom autotext, Word still
tries to do an automatic update of the autotext fields and changes the
"readonly" document.

The only "Final" I know about is the one that temporarily conceals
your Tracked Changes, and that setting depends entirely on the
computer. You can't send a document in "Final" and prevent it from
opening as "Final Showing Markup" on the recipient's computer. (Which
is why you should always be sure you've Accepted all changes before
you hand it around.)

"Readonly," I gather (I've never had a reason to use it) is easily
overcome.

I think the real problem is that .doc is just not suitable for
electronic delivery. *PDF would be better.

For all the above reasons.