When you need to share documents with people who use other word processors or who use versions of Word that have a different file format (such as Word 6.0/95), you can save documents in other file formats. For example, you can open a document created in Word 6.0, make changes to it in Office Word 2003, and then save it in a format that Word 6.0 can reopen.
Saving documents for Internet, intranet, or Web use
If you use Word to create Web pages to display in a Web browser, you can save documents in Web page format and publish them to a Web server. You can also save documents to an FTP site on the Internet (you must have an Internet account through an Internet service provider and permission to save documents on the FTP server) or to your company's intranet.
Saving your documents as XML files makes them available to any programs that can read XML, not just Microsoft Office programs. This means that you can use a single source of your content in multiple ways simultaneously. For example, you can transform a single content source into both a Word document that is formatted for printing and into data that is processed.