atw: Word templates--how clever?

Hi all -

I'm setting up templates in MS Word 2003 for a series of business
documents. The idea to have each template contain some instructions,
sample headings, boilerplate text, empty tables, and so on. Authors
will use the template to create a draft document, type away, then
send the finished draft to me or my accomplice to be spruced up and
published. The documents will range from one-pagers to 200-page-plus
monsters.

The authors are developers and business analyst types.

Having avoided Word for many years, I've been quite impressed with
how many seemingly useful features it has for this sort of thing:
- document properties
- fill-in fields
- form controls (GUI-style check boxes, option buttons, etc.)
- formatting restrictions (no manual formatting; authors can only
apply specified styles)

I've also put a bit of effort into setting up list and heading styles
in the approved fashion (per http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/ and
http://www.word.mvps.org/).

My question is, are all these features stable both individually and
in combination, or do I need to tread very carefully? Am I just
making a maintenance headache for myself or are these features
genuinely ready for business use.

I'm aware of all the problems in past versions to do with master docs
and outline lists. I'm really just interested in whether these newer
template features all work together fairly reliably in Word 2003.

Any general advice? Jump in? Run screaming?

Thanks all

Stuart

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