On a current proposal that my partner, Paula, and I are supporting, our client is using MS Word 2007. We converted it, using Microsoft's "reader," to MS Word 2002 for editing and formatting, and emailed it back. He opened, revised, and saved it in 2007, sent us the newer version, and asked us to make some additional revisions. When we opened it in 2002, we noticed several anomalies: Pagination had changed, other formatting had changed, and page breaks had changed. An explanation: Microsoft's MS Word converters still have some bugs. We recommended that he submit the electronic proposal in PDF format so he would know exactly what he was submitting.
 
Some US Government agencies still require proposal submissions in Office 2000, probably because they don't have the budget to upgrade all of their computers. Usually, Office upgrades are "backwards compatible" in that newer versions can read older versions, but older versions sometimes cannot read later versions without a "reader." The "readers" can cause the problems.
 
This suggests that bidders might want to consider keeping older versions of MS Office on at least one of their computers so they can verify what they submit electronically. Since many of you are planning to upgrade to Office 2007 and then perhaps 2010 when it ships, I thought you should be aware of these potential problems.