After I posted that, I reviewed my statements there and modified them. I was mistaken in that the normal template acts like other templates for styles.

1. A document gets the styles from its template when created, whether that template is the normal template or another template. What is the relationship between a Microsoft Word document and its template?
2. Styles in the normal template are not available to documents unless they were created from that template, and then, only the styles that were in the template when the document was created. Generally speaking all templates, at some point, started based on a normal template and contain all those styles that are seldom used.
3. Changing the normal template does not change or update the styles available in the document unless something else happens to update those styles. (i.e. Macros to Copy Styles from the Normal Template)
4. Attaching any template (or re-attaching a template) to a document with the box checked to update styles both updates existing styles in the document to match the template and imports any new styles that were created after the document was created. It does not delete styles in the document that are not in the template.