Alas, I wish that were true but the Documents object that was saved when the file was opened remains around as long as Word is active. Unfortunately the object reference points to trash. A similar thing happens with the $word object -- i.e. it stays around even if Word is closed but if I try to open another document using that object I get an error. Hence the code in the "else" block to undefine the $word object reference and get a new one. So the code snippet handles both cases where the user closes the document and where s/he closes Word instead.