I agree. There is no simply involved here.
Over a period of years we have come up with our own standard template vstd-temp.dot or dotm, etc.
The primary area of concern is the difference in fonts and styles that are used, but there are also margin and other differences. I'm trying to determine what all the differences are. I renamed my template to normal.dot on one machine, but this was to meet the needs of a single program that I use that only wants to use "normal".
I am interested in your comment on not sharing a normal template. Why is that?