Consider this below
Microsoft strongly recommends that developers find alternatives to Automation of Office if they need to develop server-side solutions. Because of the limitations to Office's design, changes to Office configuration are not enough to resolve all issues. Microsoft recommends a number of alternatives that do not require Office to be installed server-side, and that can perform most common tasks more efficiently and quickly than Automation. Before involving Office as a server-side component in your project, consider alternatives.

Considerations for Server-Side Automation of Office

Now...I had to do this...was requested as part of the parameters, and worst...about 150 users were waiting for a better solution to make them able to keep up a good pace into the system.
There were around 4 nights and tons of caffeinne, but finally I figured it out. The component was done and was rocking, baby!!!

But then I saw this, interestingly in the very last night...

Creating and manipulating MS Office objects within/usign visual studio .net
Office automation link

That�s kinda sucks!!! (just like tonight...Mengo lost to Cruzeiro...sucks...)
I've spend a quite reasonable amount of time trying to figure out a way to bypass the limitations of the office automation model...and now that I've been through the whole thing, I just realized the new version of VS.NET has it all.

anyway... the knowledge and the thinking I spent there was worthed, anyway..

lesson learned :-)

-E