Despite LibreOffice's warning that it might not work, I have always been able to convert the LibreOffice word processor native file format to Word XP/2000/2003 format, and use that whenever I might send the document to someone who probably uses Word. But then I tried saving in the latest Word XML format, and that format didn't work: when I opened the XML document, I saw that my bulleted list was formatted incorrectly. Why does this happen? Is Word XML format a Microsoft proprietary secret that LibreOffice designers have to approximate? If so, the format probably shouldn't be offered at all.

From my followings Microsoft attempted to make Office OpenXML an ISO standard. The proposed standard itself has several holes and failed technical examples of which Microsoft Office "passes" (closed source) but all other attempts at implementation fail even when following Microsoft documented examples in the proposed standard documentation. The format itself is broken for everything but Office 2007 and higher. If you try opening Office OpenXML documents in Office 2003 (with compatibility pack installed) many of them have bad rendering so it appears even within their own company they have a hard time conforming without certain proprietary bits implemented in the new Microsoft Office (2007+). My recommendation is to use ODF odt. All recent versions of Microsoft Word can view it just fine.

If you're into drama or are interested in reading more about the technical holes in the OpenXML standard then check out noooxml.org. The wikipedia page and news articles seem to be a skewed account which only talk about the voting process and not the failings of the proposed standard itself.

Interesting. It hadn't occurred to me that LibreOffice might have had "help" from Microsoft on how to implement Microsoft file formats. I guess I thought Microsoft would never have cooperated in letting any "competitors" see how Microsoft's file formats worked, and LibreOffice's designers had to figure the Microsoft file formats out themselves without any help from Microsoft.

[text retracted because it was supposed to start a new thread...oops]