I often work with quite large Word documents, and they can become a real pain once you start using some features, like automated table of contents. In fact, if someone edits the document and messes up the formatting, you'll have to edit raw field codes, with are a bit LaTeX-like [1]
Oh, yes. My pain exactly. I think word is, given the huge functionality made very accessible to pretty much anyone who can point at things with the mouse, quite impressive software.
But let a few people edit a Word document in turn, on different computers, maybe with different versions of MS Office, even the simplest 1-page abstract will turn into a bizarre Frankenstein monster where changing one thing in one place, will suddenly create funny effects in other locations... (e.g. observed recently: identing bulletted lists will change the numbering of another, numbered list...) Don't get me started on footnotes changing pages, or jumping around of embedded pictures.
So, for anything requiring collaboration between several people (I have the feeling that editing a word file from different computers, probably by different versions of MS office makes these things occure more often) it's still a mess... and something where LaTeX shines.
[1]: http://word.mvps.org/faqs/formatting/TOCSwitches.htm