If you don't want your WORD document to be altered when other people open it - SAVE IT AS A PDF! It's so easy to do!
PDF actually stands for Portable Document Format so the name tells you that it's meant for documents that are being sent. One of my pet peeves is when people send official documents to me in Word format. I'm always astounded that they aren't worried about the document being altered. On the reverse side of SAVE AS PDF is the most common question that I get asked - "How do I edit a PDF?" The main reason that I usually SAVE AS A PDF is so that my document can't be edited! Most people don't really understand that PDFs are not meant to be edited but that doesn't stop them from trying - or asking!