> * there is no public information on Word 6,7,97,98 file formats

I ran into the same problem some time ago.  I ended up by having the
user save the file in RTF format--for which publically available spec's
do exist--and I wrote an RTF reader.

Unfortunately, the publically available RTF spec's are very poorly
written (at least the last time I looked at them).  This may explain why
I have yet to see any two RTF readers (even among those written by
MicroSoft, who invented RTF) which interpret RTF files in exactly the
same way.

- Rick