To exchange documents between versions you can save as Word 97. This format is pretty much interchangeable everywhere Windows Word is in use. The main reason to save it word is that if you don't all your edits are lost
. More seriously there are lots of reasons to use it as an output format since it preserves some formatting which is better than text and many eBook creation programs will accept it as input. It is bloated and has all the other bad features you mentioned but it is also the prevalent format in use in most businesses.