>How can I use ole automation to open a word document and have it read only. I'd like for my application to determine whether or not a user has write privliges.
>

Yuri has given you good advice, but let me add one warning. The way Word treats read-only documents is that you can't save it back to the same file. However, you can do a save as and give it a new name, so it's not read-only in the sense you might think.

Tamar