I have been experiencing a frustrating problem for months, and it has only been getting worse over time.

It affects MSWord AND Adobe Acrobat Reader docs. It seems that many, but not all, word documents that I create in MSW (Office 2004) fail to open for Windows users that I send them to. (Yes, I have checked compatibility and it reports everything fine.) Same for Adobe Acrobat Reader docs. It virtually affects 99% of my aol user friends (yeah, yeah, I know, aol). But it is now affecting my non-aol user friends; people that could previously open my attachments.

BUT here's the new twist on this: I can understand to a point my saving a document, emailing it as an attachment, and having the receiver not be able to open it. What I do not understand is that I can download a word doc or pdf from our Headquarters or others, save it, WITHOUT opening it, forward to a colleague, and still they can't open it. If they go to the source from which I got it, and download it themselves, they can open it. Or if I receive a document from someone as an attachment, and forward it on without even opening it, the next person can't open it. I can, but they can't.

Again, this affects Word documents as well as Adobe Acrobat Reader documents.

What's wrong with me, or my computer, or my operating system, or ?????? My mail program is Office 2004's Entourage. I am on a G5, dual 2 GHZ, 1.5 GB SDRAM, MSOffice 2004, Mac OS X 10.3.9.

When I must get a document to a colleague, and the email attachment I've sent won't open, I find myself running to the Post Office to snail mail a CD with that document on it. When they open the CD, it all opens with no problem.

I am hoping someone out there is Sherlock Holmes!