$Word->Selection->{Text};
[download]

Rereading your post, I think I might have jumped the gun. It looks like the WholeStory method selects the entire text of the document. So you'd still want to do that, but then try setting your variable with the Text property call as shown.

use Win32::OLE qw(in with);
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Word';
    
$Win32::OLE::Warn = 3; # Die on Errors

my $Word = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('Word.Application')
    || Win32::OLE->new('Word.Application', 'Quit');

$Word->{'Visible'} = 1;
my $infile = <SOME FILE PATH>;
my $Doc = $Word->Documents->Open($infile);
$Doc->Content->Select();

my $text = $Word->Selection->{Text};
print $text;
print Win32::OLE->LastError();
[download]

Update: Although you can use the ->WholeStory; method that you used to select the whole document text and leave the creation of the document object alone, the Open method returns said object.

C-.

package readWord;

use strict;
use Win32::OLE qw(in with);

require Exporter;
use vars qw(@ISA @EXPORT);
#use LTG::DocBuddy::Config qw($DEBUG); 

@ISA    = qw(Exporter);
@EXPORT = qw(readActiveDoc);

sub readActiveDoc
# this method returns the name of the active document and a hash containing every single
# word found in the document. Hence it is ready for use
{
   
   if (my $word = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('Word.Application'))# connect to word document
   {
      # next line for debug only
      # print "\nSuccessfully connected to existing word";   
      
      my $docName = $word->ActiveDocument->Name; # retrieve name

      my $wordRange = $word->ActiveDocument->Content; 
   
      return ($docName,$wordRange);
   }
   else
   {
      return undef;
   }
}