Well, I did not think WithEvents would help, but thought I might mention it anyway. As for the difference between Excel and Word, yes the lack of event control in Word has been a complaint going back a long time.

For what it is worth, IMO this stems from a systemic difference in the long term dedication of the Excel application team versus the Word team. I have long suspected that the Word team has quite a bit more rotation of people. It just has never seemed like Excel had the number of frankly stupid things that Word seemed to have. For sure serious Excel users and developers never seem to complain to the level that Word users and developers complain.

Plus the inherent difference in the applications themselves. Excel has a deeply basic requirement to make sense and function logically. Word just needs to appear to do so. For the record I am a long time heavy Word developer. I am only a lightweight Excel user.