I want word XP to read text to me. Excel has the option to check text with
speech feedback. Windows XP even has text-to-speech built in (apparently
given the menu for setting it up and all). But i cannot find anywhere how to
get Word (or any other windows text program) to read text to me.

The help files are no help and google (and for that matter microsoft
online) only turn up help on speech recognition.

I am about to tear my hair out because this should be easy and the
technology is sitting right in front of me to do it.

Search google groups using the following search topic:
"text to speech" macro group:microsoft.public.word.newusers

You'll find an article I wrote decribing how to get some playback
capability in Word XP using Macros. There is also 3rd party stuff out
there with higher quality voices (http://www.nextup.com/ is one. I do
not endorse it. Its just the first one I found)

Matt