This is the first time I've ever seen this type of question so I've never considered it before. I'm also not sophisticated enough to run monitors on exe activities so you are way more advanced than me and I'll just ask a couple of questions that might lead you to a solution.

Do the temp files also get created if you open in READ mode but close without saving? I expect it just changes 'where' the temp file is created since you would get a ~temp file in the same directory as the document.

Can you change the script to read the xml contents of the docx zip file without using Word to open the file first?

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia