mutt,
I use Open Office myself, but if the (one) paid employee at the volunteer organization were unable to open even one attachment she would be yelled-at by "management". And she was in the case at hand. I'll spend a bit of the organization's money to spare her that.
I did, in fact, try Open Office's Writer on the offending file and it didn't recover the formatting correctly. Grrr!
It's the old IBM / Microsoft situation. If you buy IBM / Microsoft, management won't crucify you. Even if it's not the best product.