Alright so I've made some progress. I can embed the controls within a shape; however, I need the shape to adjust its size as I type. Right now, the richtextbox conforms to the shape. I need the shape to conform to the rest of the document, otherwise users are going to have to resize the shape before they type. That's just annoying.

Why there isn't a .visible property on word developer controls is beyond me.

Any ideas on where to go from here, or suggestions as to what might work?