Thanks Charles and Graham,

My believe has always been that another person's Normal is not yours, don't touch it. This firm was actually SHARING one normal from the server. I was able to put the kibosh on that at least.

But they are the second firm that has wanted to lock down the Normal in a couple weeks. I thought maybe I missed some new Word 2013 trend.

The ironic thing about this current client is that they insist:
1. Their end users are so incredibly stupid they could never manage to even use a feature like AutoText.
2. Their end users are changing the default font in the Normal.

How can both be true? (rhetorical question, no need to answer...)

Real Question: Any thoughts on loading startup and document templates from a networked drive?

This client wanted to do that too. Their reason was to avoid installing to each machine. They changed their mind when I pointed out you have no templates when off line that way. I have a viscerally negative reaction to the idea of loading global templates from the network, but searching the web it seems some do that and no one is saying it causes issues. Thoughts?

Charles - thank you for the key file locations and global style sheet macro. I have a macro that copies styles to the normal, or into the current document, but the end user has to click a button to run it which means they have to understand enough to know they need the styles.