I found a bunch of old code where we did something, and I am wondering were we insane or is this really OK.

1. We get an instance of Word into say oWord
2. We manipulate the document as we wish.
3. We make word visible'
4. We tell the user now you can save, print, do what you want.
5. THEN WE RELEASE OWORD!

I guess since word is open on the desktop somebody figured it was OK to go ahead and release oWord I said, hey, you cannot do that reliably, and they said why not, and I said uh uh uh uh . . . . . I dunno.

Is this bad, and if so why, or am I just an overcautious geek?

What did you expect to happen? All you were doing was releasing VFP's reference to Word. If you had issued

oWord.Quit()

Now, that would be a different story :)