Thank you, Andrew, for the workaround and for the suggestion for cleaning up with the vba command.

I will keep in mind that “it is possible that a newer version wouldn't INTRODUCE the problem while you are making tracked edits.”

You have written: “Equally you could do the same if your children styles were based on Normal.”

I was under the impression that the “normal” style was dependent on the Normal template.

And there is no guarantee that any two installations of MS Office will have the identical Normal templates.

That I why I defined my base style based on “no style.”