Hi Albert,

>2) use VFP to create a Word instance but then "recycle" the instance each time so that the docs are closed each run but Word stays open.

I wouldn't to it... This might be due to bad experience in the past, and Office could have changed by now. However, with Word 6 is used to be the only stable approach to reset the entire computer after 100 documents in order to keep things working. Otherwise you would get incredible slow downs and random crashes.

Keep in mind that Office is a desktop product not a server product.