>>Anyone done this - offloading Word automation to another server and then crank through lots of docs? Also, your opinion of what >>might be best:

>>1) use the VFP app to create a Word instance, process the document and then close (quit) the Word instance each time (to clear >>memory used by Word - but slower to load and perhaps loading/unloading Word 100 times a day will also have probs)

>>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.

Have to say I tried it and had issues so came up with 2 solutions;

Solution one is a small app that sits on users workstation, checks for new records and does mail merge (and in my case, print to pdf and email it). Advantage of this that 3 users have the app installed, first one to spot the new record processes it, so load is split between multiple machines. as they are workstations they are shutdown each evening so machines are "clean" each day.

Solution two, for another app we he have started using txText Control, it can read/write .DOC and .DOCX and it's much much faster that using word automation. Additional benefit is that clients can have Word, Wordpad or OpenOffice as all of them read .DOC.

Good Luck.

Gary.