Currently for those who have paid the big bucks for MS Word/ MS Office, there are two ODF converter projects. You need the ODF converter to be able to read and write the ISO standard document formats. Despite Microsoft’s efforts to force their competing OOXML “standard” upon the world, ODF is preferred. Think of a world where one could use the word processor, spreadsheet, or presentation application of your choice, and seamlessly exchange data with anyone!

Since I do not run MS Word, I cannot personally vouch for how these ODF converters compare. There are some reviews out there: some like Sun’s plugin, others the Sourceforge effort. (Let me know what you think!)

These projects may be found:

Sourceforge OpenXML/ODF Translator Add-in for Office
http://odf-converter.sourceforge.net/index.html
(N.B. This one requires some rigamarole where you have to save newly opened ODF as DOCX before you can resave it as ODF! Must be because MS is involved! This might be a reason to try the Sun plugin first?)

Sun ODF Plugin 1.x for Microsoft Office
look for “Spotlight — Sun ODF Plugin 1.1 for Microsoft Office Available Now as a Free Download” under
http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/index.jsp
download link (must set up Sun account) is on that page

I encourage all Microsoft Word users to install one of these plugins, and use the ODF format for sharing files with other users. … Of course, if you don’t want to hassle with MS Office, just use OpenOffice.org, or another option!