Thank you.
Yes, debugging will be one of my challenges... 
It is an interesting idea to install the server on the development machine. Unfortunately, the partner does not have installation files for 8.82, and has told us that it is not possible to get them.
There is Office 2007, and I suppose I could do that, but I need to call external APIs and FTP servers multiple times/day in the finished product, and using VBA to accomplish that goal seems inefficient. VBScript could work, and frankly I know I could do the whole thing in Notepad... but I doubt I am alone in thinking that is not ideal.
Is there really no way to have registered COM objects on a machine that is not and never has been on the same network as the server?