Please clarify what you mean by 'master document' and 'template'. In Word, these have specific meanings, but you don't appear to be using them that way.

In Word, a 'master document' is a kind of document used to link a group of related documents. They are further described here:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/wo...005234679.aspx
Word 'master documents' are also regarded as highly unstable and prone to catastrophic data loss. See: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/Wh...ocsCorrupt.htm

In Word, a 'template' is a file from which documents are created. The most common one is 'Normal.dot(m)'. All Word documents are based on templates. For more details, see: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/wo...010030754.aspx

You say
and ask:
Before we can proceed with any of that, we'd need to know whether the docnumber etc. are contained within the bookmarks or have been inserted after them. That's because merely locating a bookmark, then inserting something doesn't necessarily add the content to the bookmarked range. This is very common when the bookmark initially consists of nothing more than an insertion point within the document, regardless of whether the data are added manually or by code. And, if the data are inserted after the bookmark, we'd need to know how many words each item consists of.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]