How to intercept message to other application?

In my project I need to intercept messages sent to a existing application such as MS Word, including intercepting mouse click on toolbar buttons and menu items. For some buttons, I need to be informed that their events are fired, and for some others I need to prevent their event from being fired without out changing their orginal visual effects. I adopted Hook mechanism to implement it but later I found that it's to complex to identify the positions and mouse states. Anyone has better ideas to solve this problem or are their any existing package to meet these requirements?
Thx.
:confused:

no, hooking is really the only way you can do what you're trying. as far as i know at least.