Hi Dave
If I understand you correctly you want to enter a name for example in a document and then have it appear in specified areas elsewhere in the document. If this is correct you can achieve this in the following way:
1. Create a Bookmark in the first location (say called NAME). Then enter your name against that bookmark.
2. Click on each location where you want this name repeated and seect Insert followed by Hyperlink, then select the Hyperlink called NAME. This will then be repeated in every location in the doucment where you insert a hyperlink.
Hope this helps.
If I misunderstood then please come back to the forum.
Good luck.
Tony

Perhaps OpenOffice and Word have different ways of doing the same thing? I'd start (if you haven't done so already!) by saving your OpenOffice file in .odt format, since Word is supposed to understand this; far from seamless, I know, but it might help.