The Perils of Word

Many biology journals insist on receiving manuscripts in Microsoft Word prior to publication. Even though this probably violates some anti-trust law, I generally comply, to the point of painfully converting Latex manuscripts into Word on more than one occasion. Word is particularly unpleasant when writing papers with equations. Although the newer versions have a new equation editing system, I don’t use it because once in a past submission, a journal forced me to convert all the equations to the old equation editor system (the poor person’s version of MathType). It worked reasonably well in Word versions before 2008 but has now become very buggy in Word 2011. For instance, when I double-click on an equation to edit it, a blank equation editor window also pops up, which I have to close in order for the one I wanted to work. Additionally, when I reopen papers saved in the .docx format, the equations lose their alignment.  Instead of the center of the equation aligned to a line, the base of the equation is aligned making inline equations float above the line. Finally, a big problem is equation numbering.  Latex has a nice system where you give each equation a label and then it assigns numbers automatically when you compile. This way you can insert and delete equations without having to renumber them all. Is there a way you can do this in Word? Am I the only one with these problems? Are there work arounds?