(reading time 4 minutes)

In the virtual world of computers like the real world, communication is the basis of growth and improvement. And like interpersonal communications assuming too much about who you are communicating with can cause problems.

Microsoft holds a dominant share in both word processing applications and operating systems. Most computers run one version or another of Windows and frequently they run some version of Microsoft Word as well. But assuming that all computers can read the Word2000 document that you have just attached to your email is an assumption that can lead to communication problems.

It is likely that Word2000 is on less than 40% of all computers that are currently in use. The e-mail attachment that you just sent is not readable by a significant number of folks. 90% of all computers currently sold run some version of Windows. Of that 90% probably 30% don’t use Word2000 but some other software. The installed base of Macintosh is also quite large and they don’t use Word2000. There are other Linux and Unix systems and a bevy of new Internet appliances like WebTV out there as well. Many of the old Windows systems either didn’t come with Word or use a version of Word that can not open Word2000 documents.

So what’s an e-mailer to do? (The following holds true regardless of what system or software you use. If you are a Mac or Linux user then the same guidelines apply.) Here are some simple steps to increase your electronic sensitivity to the diversity that exists in the computer world:

1. If at all possible don’t send an attachment just copy the contents of your word processing document and paste into the body of the e-mail. This saves time and energy on the part of the recipient and guarantees* that they can read it.
2. If your document is heavily formatted and you need the recipient to be able to see all of that formatting and edit that file then you need to send a word processing interchange file format and not the default .doc document. Simply go to the "file/save as" menu choice and choose a more compatible file format. If you know what your correspondent is using then use that file format (it is polite to ask) . If you don’t know what your correspondent is using or are sending the attachment to multiple recipients then choose .RTF. This stands for Rich Text Format and it is similar to the idea of Esperanto. It is a common file format language that almost all word processors can speak if they need to. It retains most formatting and is easily opened by even very old word processing software that is still in use like Word Perfect.
3. In some cases you might want the recipient to be able to read a heavily formatted document but not be able edit it. Examples of this are newsletters with specific fonts or forms that are specialized. In this case you would want to create a .PDF file. This is a file format that was created by Adobe for easily viewing a formatted document across different systems, with different fonts across time and space. It is a very useful format and one that I am sure you have used. How to create one is the topic of another note and if you are interested let me know and I will forward it to you1. Probably 80% of all e-mail miscommunications are caused by enclosing an unreadable word processing file format. Some however are also caused by compression and encoding. This too is a topic for a future note.

 My legal department has advised to make the following
 disclaimer in appropriately small type:

 Guarantees are easy to make but like everything in the computer world
 they are not ironclad and susceptible to exceptions.

 1.If you go to:

 http://www.jwwalker.com/pages/pdf.html

 You can download "print2PDF" a simple Mac based print driver to easily
 create PDF files. At this site there are also links for
 similar, albeit more complicated free or cheap Windows products.