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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