>>>What I now try is to create a singleton object with lazy instantiation of a word application object. At instantiation I get the process ID of the word process and when doing automation work it checks if the object is still alive, and when releasing the object it kills the process.
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>>Note the comma before 'word.application'!!
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>That does the trick. However I still don't understand the meaning of GetObject, because when you run getobject after you have done a successful createobject, it still would create a new process each time, and the process stays alive unless you issue the quit method. I believe this was differently previous to Word 2003 or Word 2000, somewhere in those versions the way how word handled the different windows was entirely different.

I actually had the opposite problem - if the user had Word open, the createobject() would return a reference to that same instance, instead of creating a new one. Well this was W2003 or W2007, but may be a good time to revisit the thing, who knows what mischief it's now up to.