Great post from John Naughton.
The United Nations have released a Word file which, in the meta data and changes tracking, reveals some pretty embarassing edits…
When will people learn to stop using MS file formats to distribute material?
Dave Briggs
An online notebook
Dave Briggs
An online notebook
[…] Now choosing the right format always depends on your goals: if you want to share a contract with your co-works and you want them to comment and change the draft, Word is a pretty nice tool. But if you want to release that to the public, Word is a very bad format for doing so! […]
That’s wild. I hadn’t heard of it before. Unintentional transparency is a good thing, right?
Well, not always! For example, it is possible that Word will record what you are writing in one document in another, if you have them open at the same time. It has caught people out who were applying for new jobs in work time, I believe!
On a government level, like this, you might be right I guess. But on a personal level, it is always best to use RTF or PDF formats, for two reasons. One, it stops embarrasment like this happening, and two, it means that anyone can open your file, even if they don’t have Word installed.
Also, there could possibly be serious ramifications if Word documents are used in a legal context…