Yesterday, while catching up on numerous RSS feeds, I stumbled across this entry on the blog of Panic's Steven Frank, which offers an alternative solution. In a nutshell, to get the Microsoft User Data folder out of your Documents folder, just move it to your user's Library/Preferences folder. Do this while Office isn't running, and the next time you launch an Office app, the folder will stay right where you put it.
When I checked the original hint, this method is noted in the comments, but way down at the bottom, so I figured it was worth sharing again in a more obvious fashion.

