JR over at The Art Of Not Asking Why has a useful post on exporting an Org document to Docx. I’ve written about this before [1, 2, 3] and you might wonder why. After all, you can simply export directly from Org to ODT and get a Word compatible document.
The problem occurs when you’re working in an environment that requires a specific style implemented with a Word style sheet. The native Org exporter doesn’t support this so the usual solution is to use Pandoc, which does support a Word style sheet.
JTR’s post has a step-by-step recipe for making the conversion and setting up a Word style sheet using a reference document with the desired settings. He even covers the difficult areas of images and tables, which, of course, require further machinations.
None of this would be necessary if Word and its siblings would use plain text instead of an arcane, opaque file structure to store the document. After all, it’s certainly possible as Org—or, if you require even more complicated output, TeX/LaTeX—show. But, of course, that would stand in the way of editor lock in.
Regardless, if you have to produce Word documents but prefer to write in Org, take a look at JTR’s post. He shows you how to produce a good looking Word document from an easy to write Org file. He even shows how to automate the process using Álvaro Ramírez’s dwim-shell-command.