how to ask user for a variable and print it throughout the word doc

So I am a php/perl person and I really don't know how to work within
the MSword confines. Can someone help me come up with an attack for
this problem.

Here is what I am looking to do:

A user opens a word document (office 2007). A popup window asks for a
few responses such as

customer_name
engineer_name
etc...

Then the script runs and populates the appropriate fields with that
given information.  Now I guess it can be a 'find and replace' but if
there is something more elegant such as a variable etc... I am all
ears.

Thanks in advance,

Erik Witkop