1. If you mean you want menus rather than the ribbon, Microsoft doesn't
offer that feature. However, there are 3rd parties out there who do. A quick
search in Google revealed
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/EM102220621033.aspx?CategoryID=CE0
11347481033
http://www.addintools.com/english/menuword/ and others.
2. There should be no issue using Word 2003 from Access 2007. You might want
to switch to Late Binding though, since it sounds as though you don't have
Word 2003 installed on your machine anywhere. For the code you showed, try
Dim AppWord As Object
Set AppWord = CreateObject("Word.Application.11")
AppWord.Documents.Add "c:\templates\wordtemplates\fax.dot"
AppWord.ActiveDocument.ShowSpellingErrors = True
AppWord.Visible = True
AppWord.ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("ContactName").Range.Text = _
StrConv(rst![str_FirstName] & " " & rst![str_LastName], vbProperCase)
AppWord.ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("CompanyName").Range.Text = _
StrConv(rst![str_CompanyName], vbProperCase)
3. Couldn't tell you. If OpenOffice supports automation, then there's no
reason why you couldn't. I've used Access with WordPerfect in the past.

Signature
Doug Steele, Microsoft Access MVP
http://I.Am/DougSteele
(no private e-mails, please)
>I wrote a simple program in Access 2007 VBA that creates a Word document,
> takes data from the form and inserts it into the Word document. In order
[quoted text clipped - 21 lines]
>
> Thanks to anyone that can offer any input!