Is it safer to share documents as .rtf than .doc files? William Thomas
Yes, it's more secure to save documents as .rtf (Rich Text Format) files rather than .doc, Microsoft's Word document format, because this avoids the risk of so-called macro viruses. The last significant infection was Melissa in 1999, and it's a long time since I've seen one in the wild. Bear in mind that if you receive an RTF file, you can't assume it's safe. Anyone can rename a .doc file to end with .rtf and Word will still load it. The only way to be sure is to look at it in text editor, such as Notepad: RTF is a text based format whereas .doc files are binary. Also, while RTF works well with text files, complex illustrated Word documents can become very large .rtf files.
Web extra: I didn't have space to say this in print (though I've said it before), but as far as possible I'd avoid storing any data in a proprietary file format, and Microsoft's Word doc is one of those. Although Microsoft also invented RTF, it's more widely supported and, if the worst comes to the worst, still contains your original text.
Update: In an email, Mark Pack adds a good point:
As you say in today's paper, saving documents as rtf rather than doc helps protect against (now) rare macro virus. I think more importantly it's a good simple way of minimising the chance of including embarrassing information in the file by mistake (eg track changes information). I advise people to always save as rtf when a document is going to be distributed as it's much easier than having a set of instructions which covers every possible permutation of Word version, track changes setting, default save settings etc.
