Word documents can be edited by people who have access to an appropriate version of Word (I do not, admittedly by choice) but the documents themselves are binary (ok, xml) mess, whereas LaTeX ones are greppable, searcheable, etc. They also 'age' much better. I can still LaTeX most documents from 20 years ago (sometimes with minor changes).
As a disclaimer, I am one of those people who uses (La)TeX for everything. I know TeX intimately to the point that I messed with the source code several times and wrote tens of thousands of TeX macros (this is not an exaggeration). I may be biased but I still feel that learning LaTeX is well worth the modest effort it takes to start writing LaTeX documents. And the typesetting TeX is capable of is still unsurpassed.
I really value the fact that LaTeX is free software, but as a matter of practical reality, are old LaTeX documents really more accessible than Word documents? There is plenty of free software with (imperfect) support for Word these days. I recently opened a bunch of Word documents that were more than 20 years old, and I'm sure I didn't get a pixel-perfect reproduction of the original document, but as someone without a strong grasp of the LaTeX package ecosystem, I imagine compiling old LaTeX documents would have been more difficult than just installing LibreOffice or uploading the document to Google Docs.
I never regretted it, nowadays I avoid Word when possible and go for org-mode documents mixed with LaTeX. That gives me all the features and control but with less typing.
I find that much easier to do in Word. Instead of wrangling with conflicting packages, documented for programmers not users, having to compile multiple times to get the references to actually render correctly, etc in Word I can simply define my references in a structured way and they work perfectly without surprises.
My comment was targeted mostly at the academic writing, where things like references, placing of figures and tables, and formatting are relevant. I really think that formatting documents is kind of a solved problem, and it slightly annoys me when I hear people complaining about the headaches they have when formatting their papers in word.
At the end the problem is that _word_-like porgrams is all that is taught at school and so, LaTeX looks super complex and frightening to a lot of people, even when it actually is very simple in its essence. Maybe the most complicated thing in LaTeX is to start a document, because you basically have to configure how it will look and what packages you will use. Then it is all about \section, \ref and \cite. At the beginning this is certainly a bit confusing, but solutions like Overleaf, which offers different templates at a click distance, are good ways to overcome this problem. I personally don't use it, and prefer the vimtex plugin plus a lot of snippets (certainly not for the beginners).
But just to clarify again, it is clear to me that not everyone have the time to learn it, nor is it always the best tool for a given task.
All of the people that I have met that could correctly insert an image in a word document were able to learn VBA at some point. I am yet to meet somebody that can maintain a document with multi-paragraph lists, I certainly can't.
Yes but with LaTeX (or anything else that requires signifcant time to learn) you have to make a noticeable investment of your time upfront. If you already use and know Word you may be aware of its shortcomings but it can still be difficult to justify spending the time required to learning something else.
Especially because while you know that your current system (in this case Word) is annoying, you also know that it works. In the sense that you are able to produce whatever it is that you are using it for. Even though you might also recognize that the result could be better.
With switching to anything new, you don't know
- How much time it will take for you to learn it and become effective in using it.
- If it will solve the problems that what you are currently using has.
- That it won't have other problems instead.
And I think to a lot of people the perceived risk outweighs the potential gain. Especially for people who are working a full time job, have a family etc.
Furthermore, a Word document can be edited by "anyone". If you collaborate with someone else on something, switching to LaTeX means that either they have to learn it too, or they will have to tell you what changes to make and then you must do the editing.
Also, not every document is worth typing out in LaTeX.
I used LaTeX for a couple of years. It has some benefits but I rarely use it myself any longer. Most of my documents I write in Google Docs or in Markdown. Sometimes I use Markdown with a sprinkle of LaTeX and run it through pandoc to produce a pretty PDF with some formulas without having to use almost any LaTeX at all except for in a few select places in the document. For some documents I use Adobe InDesign.
Even one of my best friends who used to be a hardcore proponent of using LaTeX for everything I don't think he's using it that much any longer. Not to the extent he used to back when we were in the university.
In summary, the time cost is a hard sell and it's not given that the time spent learning it will actually be worth it.