gibbo,

It would help if you were precise in your terminology (unless you are, and there's something none of us know).

The Document_New Event exists in Word 97. What makes you think it doesn't?

The AutoNew macro can also be used.

As Howard so succinctly said, Word 97 is a bit lacking in Application events (although it does have a DocumentChange event which will fire) but you don't need to use them for this.