The ODF or Open Document Format was created by a consortium of companies including IBM and Sun. It is a non-proprietary and open format for the storage of documents and as such is a rival to the proprietary formats of others, mainly Microsoft.

One objective of open formats like ODF is to guarantee long-term access to data without legal or technical barriers, and some governments have come to view open formats as a public policy issue.

The main concern is that in decades to come the software to open and read the propriety formats may not be available, and without access to the supporting standards documentation, it may not be possible to open historical documents.

OFD is used by the Open Office project, a free and highly functional alternative to Microsoft Office.

In order to help address the fears of some governments and institutions Microsoft have just released a free document translatorr that converts Microsoft Word documents to ODF format.

Amongst other things this will enable organisations that insist on ODF compliance to adopt Microsoft solutions where they may otherwise have gone for Open Office.
 It may also tempt some users into upgrade their Microsoft software as the translator only works with Office 2003 and 2007.

Microsoft aim to release converters for other Office applications including Excel by the end of the year.

I often get asked to help lawyers with Microsoft Word. This can be anything from basic advice on using the the core features, help with setting up and managing, styles, VBA (previously macros) automation,  through to the development of Word add-ins to help with more complex firm specific tasks.

Word is a great application with a huge range of features many of can deliver significant productivity gains and help you produce documents to a higher standard and to do so more quickly

There is a range of free information on the Internet which can help you make better use of Microsoft Word.

A good place to start is the guides published by Microsoft specifically for law firms.

Word 2003 Legal Users Guide
Word 2002 Legal Users Guide
Word 97/2000 Legal Users Guide

Microsoft also publish a document listing the new features in Word 2002/2003 of interest to lawyers.

All of these contain advice on using the features in Word that are of particular interest/use to lawyers (e.g. styles, track changes, document comparison etc).