Persuade my company's marketing person to use an actual template instead of document

[shansen]

Hello anyone who can help,


I work in an office with about 50 other people who write technical reports. Currently, not everyone uses the same Word template for producing reports that look consistent (styles, header/footer, etc.). I created a template about 2 years ago that only some people use - the purpose is mainly to get consistent styles for report headings, body text, table of contents, margins, etc. (The text content of our reports varies enough that a template for most of the content would not be needed/advisable.) Not everyone knows how to copy a template into the correct folder and create a new document based on it, and they're lazy.

We now have a new Marketing person (we had no one in this position before) whose job it is to revamp the "look" of our reports, and create a new template for the purpose of visual consistency among all of our report writers. Only she is not making a template (.dot) for everyone to save and use for future reports. She has made a document (.doc), presumably based on her own local Normal.dotm, and wants us to use this document as the "template" for future reports. (I guess by copying it or by doing a Save As??)

How can I convince her that it is necessary to create an actual template file (.dot)? We would not need to use the template to store macros, but could possibly use it for Autotext entries. I know reusing a document as a template can create problems down the line, but how exactly?

Thanks - I know this is a long post!