>Does anyone know of a way to allow users to alter individual words/phrases
>within a memo field (editbox) to produce bold, italic or underlining?

I was about to tell you to use the ActiveX RTF control, but then you got to the part about needing to use the Report Writer.

How about this: since Word Processing is such a big part of your app, why don't you read up on OLE Automation, and use Word? If this isn't a viable solution, let us know, and someone can come up with a better answer....