KWE,
Why do you need a shell command?
Instead, open Word (and the Word Doc) from Excel VBA.
That way, you can keep all your macro commands in Excel VBA and have no need
to pass variables to Word.

Dim appWD As Word.Application
Set appWD = CreateObject("Word.Application.9") 'For Word 2K. For Word XP
use "Word.Application.10" etc.
appWD.Visible = False 'If you want to hide word window and have it
working in the background.
appWD.ChangeFileOpenDirectory "C:\directory where your word Doc is"
'Word looks here for file.
appWD.Documents.Open Filename:="Your doc's name", ConfirmConversions:=False,
ReadOnly:=True, _
AddToRecentFiles:=False, PasswordDocument:="", PasswordTemplate:="",
Revert:=False, _
WritePasswordDocument:="", WritePasswordTemplate:="",
Format:=wdOpenFormatAuto 'Open doc



You can manipulate the word doc from here using Word VBA

E.g. To put today's date in a formfield bookmarked as Date

appWD.ActiveDocument.FormFields("Date").Select
appWD.ActiveDocument.FormFields("Date").Result = Date

To close Word from Excel VBA use

appWD.DisplayAlerts = wdAlertsNone 'Turn off alerts if you don't want the
"Save Document?" box to show.
appWD.Quit SaveChanges:=False 'Quit word

Henry


"KWE39" wrote in message
...
I have an excel macro that opens a word document through a shell command.
The word document also has macros associated with it that are triggered on
the "open" event. What is the best way to pass values in my excel macro
to
my word macro?