Word style sheets: two questions

[Steve Pendleton <SPendlet -at- COGNEX -dot- COM>]

I'm having a small-but-irritating snag with MSW 97; maybe someone can
fix it
or confirm it as a bug. Basically, two of the style tags in my document
revert to unwanted indentations whenever I reopen the document. I've
redefined
them a dozen times now, carefully modifying the template through the
Modify Style dialog, carefully checking 'Add to template,' and carefully
saving the
changes to the .dot when prompted. No matter.

How do I get Word to take me at my word? Am I doing something wrong?
Maybe someone can teach me how to make MSW less undeterministic.
Or does it just refuse to change some of the attributes of a some of
its user-defined styles sometimes?

While we're at it, is there any way around Word's 'template file'
behavior?
I'm absolutely baffled why Microsoft chose to detach the style sheet
(.dot)
from the document itself (.doc). Yes, I know you can make global
changes by substituting one .dot for another, but that benefit comes at
a very high cost, since it makes all documents very fragile and
nonportable.
Whenever I pass documents back and forth with my SMEs, they fall apart.
So my question is, is there any way to subvert Word's style paradigm?
I want the .doc files to contain all of the data needed to reliably
recreate
themselves, no matter who opens them. How do I do that?

If you can help, my hat's off to you.

Steve Pendleton
Technical Writer DeLuxe
Cognex, Acumen Products Group
"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain"

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