Making Word play nice with Mac

I started using my Mac when my PC crashed, and now I find that I am unable to return Word.doc files via email as .doc attachments. I can copy them to a disk, but if I want to email, I have to convert to rtf. I'm told something is not right.

I just tried to pick up a coded, templated, .doc file from another client's ftp site, and I got the same, strange "slavic" characters, followed by a bunch of junk, then some readable text, then more junk. No coding, no template (nothing I can work on). Help?!

I tried changing a setting I found to rtf, but it had no impact on how the file on the site appeared. The file on the site has a .doc extension, so I think this is all one issue. Any ideas anyone?

Sounds to me like a MIME type got screwed up in Safari. If the correct MIME type isn't set (please someone who's more knowledgable exaggerate on this), the web page won't display the file correctly.