Sorry but I should have said that I want to run the VB.NET application with
Option Explicit turned ON.

(I can get it to work with Option Explicit OFF using:
                          oWordApp.WordBasic.DisableAutoMacros(1)

  where oWordApp is of type Word.ApplicationClass )

I think I need to do something like:
     oWordApp.WordBasic.GetType().InvokeMember _  
              ("DisableAutoMacros",Reflection.BindingFlags.InvokeMethod , _
                 Nothing, oWordApp.WordBasic, Nothing)
... but can't get it to work.