result is the same. what next ??? pls. advise.

I played around with this briefly in the command window and this code did not blow up. I am not sure that it does what you want it to, but it is a starting point since it does not crash < s >

oword = CREATEOBJECT( 'word.application' )
odoc = oword.Documents.Add()
oheaderfooter = odoc.Sections(1).Headers(1)
oheaderfooter.LinkToPrevious= not oheaderfooter.LinkToPrevious

Your best bet would be to get a reference to your document in VFP version 7.0 or later and manipulate it in the command window to see what kind of results you get.