I will check again on Word 2007b2 but for earlier versions of Word the
general rule is that
a. you can't open file-type data sources (.doc etc.) on URLs.
b. Word always has to access an "object" (in the broadest sense of the
word) accessible via Windows networking to open a data source. That object
may be the data file itself (.doc, .htm, .mdb, .xls, an MS query file (.dqy
I think), an ODBC machine DSN, a data link file (.udl) or an Office Data
Connection file (.odc), even when it's opening a "client-server" type
database that's locatable using an IP address.

There's no logical reason why either (a) or (b) /have/ to be that way. They
just are, as far as I can tell. Further, there's no logical reason why you
couldn't actually comply with (b) and still open a .mdb at a URL, but the
Jet OLEDB provider doesn't appear to support it. (I tried again, a few days
ago, just to be sure, but of course there may well be some simple approach I
haven't tried).

FWIW as far as .mdb s are concerned, Access won't open them on HTTP URLs
(perhaps not on RTF URLs either), so it's no surprise that OLEDB won't do
it. But Excel will open workbooks at URLs - it's just that the OLEDB
provider won't, or at least not when it's invoked from Word. I cannot help
feeling that modifying the OLEDB provider to do it wold be fairly
straightforward and that MS had either a technical or commercial for not
doing so, or not allowing other file data sources to be opened on URLs. I
don't know why they haven't changed those things, but in all probability the
reason is either "it wasn't a priority" or "the security implications are
unknown"

So...

...no, I don't think so...

But as I say, I haven't re-checked on 2007.

Peter Jamieson