I have done alot of R&D in this area and it is true, it is very slow to use OLE. Here are the alternatives that I have tried with varying amounts of success:

Used a text template system and then imported the raw ASCII into the Word document
Wrote VBScript to automate the search and replace of global variables that I created i.e. {{first_name}}. This option allowed me to retain more Word formatting
Used text templates with raw RTF output that Word could import

Richard

There are three types of people in this world, those that can count and those that cannot. Anon