I may not use open office again

So, I am writing my thesis and things seem to be going fairly well. But I decided to save it and reopen it because I seemed to have hit some setting I don't know how to get out of otherwise. I then reopen my document and find that every single image and has been deleted! It will take me at least an hour to return it to the state it was previously in! Apparently it is a known problem, and essentially the only solution is to simply not work in microsoft word formatting.

Not using .doc files seems absurd to me, no one knows what to do with a .odt file when you send them, which I have done by accident resulting in wasted time on both the part of me and the professor I sent it to. Even worse I have had one experience where I went to a presentation accidentally bringing an open office formatted presentation and it forced me to give the talk cold, without slides. Since that point in time I have religiously used the microsoft formating as a way to avoid any problems. Now that I know using microsoft formating can cause equally bad problems that leaves me with only one reasonable choice, come up with a real copy of microsoft office as soon as I can. I suppose since I am done with school this may become less important quite quickly though.