I think Excel formatting is great and I would have voted for that. Unfortunately, not everyone has excel viewer/writer. Secondly, there is one extra click to download and view the file. Updating this file would mean saving the file, opening the file, editing it, saving it again and then attaching it. So it requires some work. It would be ideal if this website supported Excel or some other tabular format.
Given the lack of such a functionality, I suggest to use some color coded scheme to identify the pending and approved cases. If the entry for each case needs to span across multiple lines, that's fine.
I agree with you that instead of so many formats, we should stick on one agreed upon format.
P.S.: My case is still pending at DOL, I updated the format in the interest of people waiting here. However, once format is decided now, it might be difficult to change at a later time.