Using text in MS Word

Hey, thanks for checking this out...
Alright, what I'm trying to do is write a (hopefully simple, cause I haven't been programming all that long) program that filters through the text of a document as the user types it (program is run in the background until manually closed down) and changes shorthand into more formal text ("ne" = "any", "b/c" = "because"). However, I have a couple of issues... When reading in the file with an ifstream, there is all those extra characters MS Word uses, so it makes it difficult to change just the right characters. Is there a way to read just the text in, without the extra characters without manually copying it to a .txt file and then writing the edited stuff back out to the document? If anyone knows where a good tutorial is on that sort of thing, I would gladly accept that, too. Thank you!
By the way, I'm using C++...

Unless you want to spend an age working out the MSWord .doc format (or maybe write a new MSWord!!) then forget ifstreams....

You may want to look at a keylogger...there are various threads...and I have an example on my site.....but unless you are adept at Windows programming (inc. Dlls, windows hooks, process space...ect) forget it.....

Yeah, I pretty much figured that ifstreams were not the way to go, that's why I was looking for a new way, thank you. I will definitely check out your site and check into keylogging, I appreciate it.