"odt" to "doc" on GW Server?

Our small law firm runs a NetWare server with GroupWise as our integrated 
email / document management system.  Our workstations are all Microsoft XP 
Home running Microsoft Office 2000, 2003 and a few 2007.  

I've been trying to find alternatives to the Microsoft Office Suite 
because of the price.  I've worked with Open Office, but I have been 
waiting for the ODMA integration to be fixed.  Finally Novell has modified 
a recent version of OO to fix the integration with GroupWise.

Novell's version of Open Office integrates perfectly, however, the file 
format save selection does not carry through when saving to the server.  
In other words, I've set up OO to save as all Microsoft file formats 
rather than the OO file formats.  This works perfectly when saving to a 
local drive.  However, when I save to the server, the file format is no 
longer, for example, "doc" but reverts to OO's native "odt"
file format.  
This makes it impossible for others using Microsoft to use the same file 
across the network or to email the file to a client.  I know that we can 
select the properties of the file on the server and change the version 
from "odt" to "doc" and it will work, but this is not
something that our 
users will do.

I'm not an IT professional, but rather a lawyer who is trying to maximize 
profits by minimizing payments to Microsoft.  

Is there something that I'm missing on my configurations?  Has anyone else 
found this to be a problem?

Are you using the File save dialog or the disk icon on the toolbar to save?
Are you able to do a file save as and have it result in the correct format?