Hi Trevor,

Some remarks:

-- I'd look at how StoryRanges figure into this.

-- Whether you treat paragraphs as parts of the doc (as in your first list) or as part of sections (your second list) is a matter of choice, depending on what you want to do. In the VBA help, you can see Paragraphs can be accessed from the Document, Selection, or some Range. If you want to create some hierarchy for accessing all objects in a doc, the "natural" parent would, IMO, be the StoryRange (as a special case of a Range).

-- Shapes and floating tables will probably be problematic if you want to traverse a document, "collecting" all objects.
Best consult the VBA help on where they may appear (say, Shapes as part of other Shapes, ShapeRanges, ...).

-- I wouldn't deal with Words and Sentences if it can be avoided. Both are calculated on the fly, and that takes a lot of time that's usually wasted, because few macros need to deal with text on that level.

HTH,
Klaus