You might also consider OpenOffice, which writes to ODF. That way, you're working to a standard. You can script OpenOffice in Python (http://udk.openoffice.org/python/python-bridge.html) . OpenOffice can save in .doc, and does a pretty good job of making a file that most MS Word versions will render properly.
According to http://opendocumentfellowship.org/Devel/LibOpenDocument, there is a Python API in development, but I don't know how far along they are. ODF isn't too bad to hack, if you need to do that. Ron -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
