The essential problem here is that people feel they NEED to use MS Word or an equivalent program for absolutely everything. I have been sent emails containing nothing but an MS Word attachment in which is contained... the "letter" I was being sent. It's crazy.
Oh, it gets much worse than that.
I work desktop support for a large University and regularly receive documents from users either explaining problems or to convert for them. The most common is an email containing nothing but a PowerPoint slide show containing a text only explanation of their problems!!
Now, I wouldn't mind so much if they used nice transitions and effects, but it's always just plain text on whatever template they used last time. These are people who are meant to be educating our next generations, and the worst culprit is someone who is regarded as a bit of an IT guru by his peers.
The real problem is, these people find one program that they can make text show up in, and just use that for everything