Do you deal with “formatting drift” in shared Word templates?

I’m curious how other teams handle this.

You start with a clean, consistent Word template — the fonts, colors, margins, and spacing all look perfect.

Then people start using it.

Someone pastes text from the web, changes a font size to “fit” something, or tweaks a color to make text "pop".

Over time, those tiny changes pile up.

Before long, every document looks almost on brand, but not quite.

Headings are inconsistent, spacing shifts, colors wander — the template quietly drifts.

I’ve started calling this formatting drift:

Do you see this happen where you work?

If so, how do you prevent it — strict templates, training, macros, add-ins, or just vigilant cleanup?

Posted Nov 1, 2025, 1:08 PM UTC

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