OK, I lied. Thread 808042, Message 808093 did not solve my problem after all. The following code does not actually save any files to disk and does not produce any errors either:

IF !USED("lettype")
USE lettype
ELSE
SELECT lettype
ENDIF
SCAN
WAIT WINDOW "Refreshing " + ALLTRIM(lettype.letname) + "..." NOWAIT
ThisForm.oWord.Refresh()
ThisForm.oWord.Object.SaveAs(lettype.letname)
ENDSCAN

The .Object... does not show up in Intellisense, yet it does not produce any error or warning at runtime. What am I missing?

I would prefer avoiding the solution of creating a separate Word instance and cutting / pasting the General Field contents into it because that will not guarantee the other document properties will be applied (i.e. page orientation, etc.). Also, I would prefer not to use the solution that incororates low-level file handling with a 599 offset because it appears that will not always be valid. In addition, using binary memo fields or storing the files completely outside a table are pretty much out of the question at this point because of time and design constraints.

Why on Earth would MS create a General Field that will store files without providing a reasonable way of getting them back out? There must be an easier way to get these Word documents back out of the General Field. Anyone?