RE: Distributing Word docs to customers

["Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>]

Mary Arrotti wrote:
 
> We're currently debating pros & cons of how we distribute our 
> documents to our customers. I'm more comfortable with 
> distributing all our docs (other than Help) to customers in 
> PDF format. This has been common practise in my experience. A 
> coworker prefers distibuting our docs in Word format so our 
> internal sales & support people can copy text from the docs. 
> (However, we wouldn't want our customers to do this.) While 
> the obvious solution might be to produce both formats - my 
> coworker feels this unnecessarily complicates our process. 

I presume you're authoring in Word. So why would sharing the Word docs
internally, but delivering PDFs to customers be complicated? Unless she
simply objects to producing PDFs as complicated. 

IMHO, giving Word docs to your customers is a terrible, terrible idea --
unless your company is an OEM supplier, and your customers need to
rebrand and modify the docs before printing/PDFing them for delivery to
their customers. 

Aside from the formatting/appearance issues others have mentioned, there
are more serious concerns with distributing Word docs. How does your
coworker propose to prevent customers from copying or modifying the text
in the Word docs? Does your coworker know that Word docs can contain
confidential company information? Google "word metadata document
security" (sans quotes) to learn about the risks and the steps you have
to go through to protect your company. Creating PDFs is far simpler and
less risky. 

My $0.02. YMMV.

Richard


------
Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
------




 
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