Programmer new to Word VBA

I am an experienced programmer but new to VB. I am starting a new project and I'd appreciate pointers to get me started.

I want to develop a 'content analysis'add-in for Microsoft Word. Similar in many ways to the spellchecker, it will scan all the words in the current document and highlight the ones that match a pre-defined list. When the user clicks on (or hovers over or whatever) the highlighted word, the user will be presented with a blurb about the proper use of the highlighted word and/or a clickable list of suggested alternatives for that word.

From the research I have aleady done on how to get started on this project I have the following questions:

(1) Could this be done using just the VBA tools that come with Microsoft Office?

(2) If a more robust programming tool is needed, must it be Microsoft Visual Studio, or are there better/cheaper alternatives?

(3) Would I need to develop a separate version of the program for each version of Word (e.g., Word 2003/XP/2000/98) that it might be run on?

Thanks in advance for any pointers to get me started, links to tutorials on the web, keywords that I can use to search this site's forums or google generally, or, especially, working code samples.

Welcome to the Forum Hafabee :wave:

Approx how many words would be contained in the pre-defined list?

If you use Late Binding you wont need to write separate versions for each version of Word.

You may be able to use the SmartTag SDK to create this. ;)

Bruce: Eventually about 5000 words total

RobDog: Thanks, I'll take a look at those

-Hafabee