Hi Dave,
The only concern here is the inefficiency of retrieving a record from a (potentially large) word doc. If you keep your background data in individual word docs and have each path (or hyperlink) as a field in the Excel record, you'll be in good shape for quick retrieval and background printing.
Also, if the docs are all in the same folder and the filenames are derived from an existing field in the record (like a ref number or company name), it'll only take a couple of lines of code to implement it.