>The same can be said for automation. I have seen a lot of threads here and on Foxite where the automation code was working with Office 2000 and then quit working with maybe Office 2003; then it was when Office 2010, then it was Office 2012, etc.

True. I've seen automation break on new versions so many times, that I generally distrust whatever automation of office there is. Things which work for a decade may decide to break simply because they get deprecated, or some property is now hidden, or there's a security feature preventing them, or the method is replaced with a differently named one.

My classic example is the new dialogs which seem to be introduced in every version and aren't covered with the old technique of suppressing dialogs - the setting simply doesn't apply to them.