Sergey, Thanks but here is my question, more precisely put. If I have
opened up Word like this:

oWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")

Can I test to see if the variable oWord exists (if so, how?)

And , if I find that oWord exists, then could I use the
existing instance of word?

So, then I would not start with oWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")
but some other command that gets me right into the already open
word?

Steve