Scott;
I searched the registry to find all occurances of the Word CLSID value and only ran across it in the Word specific areas. Apparently Norton is not installed and does not reference Word, but thanks for the heads up. However, I did wrap my CreateObject calls in an error block and used CreateObjectEX if the standard failed. Luckily the application is a one up system so I was able slip stream the change in there. Works like a charm.
I'd still like to know why that happens, but I can explore that some other time. Thanks for the time and attention.
Regards,
~Erik Folley