Paul is not saying don't ask for advice or help here. He is saying that if you want to use Word to produce documents, you need to learn how it works. Otherwise you are going to be very frustrated. Even if someone is willing to patiently take you step-by-step through getting what you want, the delays in the process will be mind-numbing. It will seem as if Word is fighting against you and you will have to backtrack and undo work.

See Basic concepts of Microsoft Word: An introduction by Shauna Kelly.

Converted documents never make good templates. Period. This is true even if the best and most expensive converter available is used. Converters are good at getting a document that is in one file format into another file format that looks close to the same when printed. The underlying structure of converted documents is always a mess. This is not your fault or anyone's fault really, it is just how it is.

If you want to see why Paul thought your document an "abomination" look at it with non-printing formatting characters displayed. Click in one of the "tables." Showing non-printing formatting marks in Microsoft Word. Also, view it in "draft" or "normal" view.

Imagine, if you will, an automobile put together with no welding or fasteners that looks very pretty on the showroom floor. Every piece is separate but it hangs together by gravity and friction. If you even try to open the door and get in, much less drive it, it will fall apart. That is a good metaphor for the document produced by a converter. When you see a beautiful new shiny car on the showroom floor, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that you can drive it. When you see something that looks like a Word document produced by a document conversion process, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that you can edit it using Word. Appearances can be deceiving. In the case of Word documents produced by conversion from another format, they are. Your reasonable expectation is mistaken. Trying to edit this document is like trying to drive said car! One push and it will be scattered in pieces all over the place.

If I want to create a template based on a converted document I always save it as a .txt file and copy the text from the .txt file into Word. In Word, I format that text so it looks like what I started with (if that is what I want) using Styles.

"Template" is a word of art in Word jargon. It does not simply mean a document that can be re-used or has text you want. It means a special kind of document created by Word for that purpose that has a different kind of file structure. Templates in Microsoft Word

See also Understanding Styles in Microsoft Word.