Since the documents concerned can't find their template (as I suggested in my first post at a & b but you dismissed), changing the template to 'Normal' is unlikely to have any adverse consequences. However, attachment to the correct template can be essential for documents that rely on macros in their templates or have the 'automatically update document Styles' option checked. In the former case, the lack of access to the macro possibly means there's a loss of functionality and for the latter case, your formatting could be completely messed up.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]