The Curse of MS Word 2007

A few weeks ago, I noticed there was something strange when I was editing the source document of my latest story. It seems as if I had been careless and left many words glued together without spaces. However, it was impossible because I was certain that I had weeded out all major typos beforehand. I fixed those glued words as fast as I could and resumed my normal editing. However, a few days later, I noticed similar typos appeared again. I then realized that I wasn't crazy! Something actively messed up my story! Later, I caught the culprit: Microsoft Word 2007 !!!

Beware! Word 2007 can mess up your documents!

I currently use MS Word 2013 to edit my stories at home. However, when I'm at the office, I still use MS Word 2007. It was very easy to detect the incompatibility between them. As I googled the internet, I was glad to know that I wasn't the only victim.

It turns out that DOCX created by MS Word 2013 has issues if it is later modified in MS Word 2007. Upon saving, Word 2007 will randomly erase some spaces between your words. It is not clear why it happens. Microsoft has provided a downloadable fix (around 150MB) for this problem. However, once a document has been screwed, you need to manually fix it! And trust me, it's no picnic!

There are several ways to prevent MS Words 2007 from screwing your documents (other than installing the fix):
1. Keep your documents in DOC instead of DOCX
2. Once you use Office 2010 or Office 2013 (ie: Word 2010 or Word 2013), never use Word 2007 to edit your file!!!