I link vfp to word docs and have users edit it in MS Word.
since vfp keeps on going i don't know when the user actually did his thinng and closed the doc.

What you need to do is to create a VFP event handler to prevent to user from cloing Word when you do not want them to. If you go to the Tools and Utilities page of my web site and download the white paper and code samples from my conference session entitled "Office Automation With VFP", there is a sample that demonstrates this as well as an explanation on how to do it.