If you are working in a true MS Windows environment, easily the best way to approach this is through OLE/ActiveX. In other words, instantiate a Word.Document instance and tell it what to do.

There are plenty of CPAN modules that will carry you this far, and, I daresay, probably some that go the whole nine yards. Definitely worth a close look:   anytime you wander into what you instinctively know should be “familiar territory,” someone in CPAN-land has almost invariably indeed preceded you, and left a trail of jewels behind. And, for all we love to criticize and lampoon them, the Microsoft people did a bang-up job with OLE support for their products.