No it is a problem, especially for writing a thesis!
Well I hope journal editors have a DTP program even if I send it in Word, yet my thesis is not exactly edited this way
So for the same reason interchangebility in not an issue for this case (the topic was asking about thesis, otherwise interchangebility is an issue) and it's only important if my editor supports my citation manager plugin.
And, I wrote my master thesis a bit before Word 2007, so I know there are some things better now (and few worse).
If they just mixed all the good stuff from old and new Word and Open Office, it could be really joy to work with that
Didnt you have to send your thesis to your promotors etc? Here we do.. and all of them used word.. so no point in writing it in another program... they wouldnt be able to check it anyway...
When we send papers/drafts etc to others... (other people at the lab, other labs) its all in word...because they all use word.. if you use something else... problems..
Well it would be nice of course from Microsoft to add a converter for Openoffice text formats...I guess they're too smug and complacent for that (if they didn't do this in 2010/13, no idea)