I agree with you BBJT. But I think the big issue here is not access the properties, but do it without opening the file. This is very usefull specialy when you need to create or modify a property in a group of docs. Opening each doc. and change the properties is time consuming and it's easy to have errors. Another way is to have an API that can automate the opening of each file and act on the properties, but that is also time consuming for the computer (I have this method for AutoCad because it doesn't work with DSOfile).
Regards