Inserting and Retrieving .doc and xls. files in SQL7

I am trying to create an application in VB where I can add and retrieve Microsoft Word documents and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets in a Microsoft SQL7 database as recordsets. I know that in order to save all the formats as well as their contents I need them to be inserted in an image data type. Could anyone give me some tips in order to achieve this.
Thanks in advance.
Any other alternative suggestions are welcome.

Why won't you save the path to the doc in the database. When you call this field just shell to the document in the path

Iouri Boutchkine
[email protected]

Thank you so much for your advice, but I would still like to save it all the data in the SQL Server for security reason. If you know how to write and read image data type from VB I will really apreciate it. Thanks again.