How the documents look is everything. That’s what separates desktop publishing like Word from Notepad. The documents have to look the same and have to print the same. Legal cases depend on it. Academic submissions depend on it (Nature Communications template is not latex, it is word). This is not something that can be omitted.
Ah, but, “pdfs aren’t editable” and “pdfs cost more money to view”. People absolutely do use Word when they want documents to look the same, and will complain when the documents look different.
That's the conventional short-term wisdom, but you'll find just about any rule is bendable to breakable when market conditions change, folks get scared, or they simply decide to.
There's no document formatting that can't be copied elsewhere. Start with new documents and convert the old ones (to pdf or whatever) at some point.
