[ preprepared document follows ] You sent an attachment in Word format, a unpublished, inconstant, and proprietary format peculiar to Microsoft, which makes it problematic to read. If you send me plain text (preferred), HTML, or even PDF, then I will read it. Converting the file to HTML is simple. Open the document, click on File, then Save As, and in the Save As Type strip box at the bottom of the box, choose Text Only (or Text Document, HTML Document, or Web Page). Then choose Save. You can then attach the new text or HTML document instead of your Word document. Note that versions of Word change in inconsistent ways - if you see slightly different menu item names, please try them. You may wish to reconsider using Word documents for email communications, there are technical, personal, professional, and legal risks associated with the practice. Distributing documents in Word format is bad for you and for others. You can't be sure what they will look like, or even if they will work at all when viewed by someone with a different version of Word. They also compromise the privacy of the author by including hidden information within the document which enables others to pry into the author's activities. Text that you think you deleted may still be embarrassingly present - a particularly grim feature when the text compromises corporate security or non-disclosure agreements. See http://www.microsystems.com/Shares_Well.htm for more info. Receiving Word attachments is bad for you because they can carry viruses (see http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/acro.html). Word document traffic is bad for the Internet due to the startling inefficiency of the format. Word documents can take 20 to 40 times the amount of space of the equivalent text document. For a modem user for whom a 10K text file would take an reasonable 3 seconds to download, the Word file containing the same text could take 2 -minutes- to retrieve and read. Even Word's HTML documents are blithely huge, and can cut the effective speed of a website using them by a factor of ten or more, as well as potentially failing to display as expected in a client's browser. Requiring Word documents is bad for you and for your business, due to its chilling effect on communications with clients who will have to subject themselves to all the risks and uncertainties above in order to communicate with you, as well as the increased cost to you directly in terms of licensing fees for outfitting scores of workstations with Word itself, heavier network impact, increased storage requirements, more frequent support calls, and lost clients. But above all, sending people Word documents puts pressure on them to use Microsoft software and impedes their ability to choose. In effect, you become a unpaid buttress of the Microsoft monopoly. This pressure is a major obstacle to the broader adoption of free software. More information on these problems can be found at: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html