sledgehammer meet nut
Apart from the fact that a growing number of computers don't run anything capable of handling Microsoft's document-flavour-of-the-week, in the vast majority of cases, Word adds unnecessary complexity to basic text.
I'd guess 95% of all docs written in this overblown monster of a program can and should be written on wordpad. The number of projects actually needing Word are about the same as those needing specialist graphic or CAD.
I find HTML-Kit292 best for examining docx(tm) and extracting information (such as my next dentist appointment). Open Office handles all the other perversions of the document format that Microsoft has invented over the years.