Errm - RTFM - the .doc file went from 1.92Mb to 7.08Mb in the .rtf file - which is about the right magnitude of change I would like but in totally the wrong direction!
What's irritating about this is that I've had the problem before - and cracked it - but for the life of me I can't remember how!
I seem to remember there is a quite neat way of doing it ???
I do rather agree that MS Word really is a bit of a dog (I simply love the way that you make one change in a table and ooops! The whole damn table changes). But it's the one all the punters at the other end use ...
When I'm a little less submerged in the swamp with this particular problem I'll take another look at Open Office - is that what used to be Star Office?
And thanks Richard - but some of the folk I deal with don't quite have the mentality to even unzip files - Doh! - and all I'm trying to do is save a bit of upload/download time ...