I've been working for a week on this template, I've been careful to put all
my new styles, including Table and Caption styles in the template. I
replicated the document and the template to my laptop, confirmed everything
was there and working, and left my house. Now I see that when I try to
insert my Captions and other pieces of text that have multiple character
styles via AutoText, all of that information is missing!

Why on Earth does Word refuse to let us assign AutoText and other entries to
a specific template? Or does it? Did I make a mistake when I left? Was there
a way to store my AutoText in the template I defined?

If no, this is like the dictionary - why can't we define a dictionary for
every template. I write fiction in addition to my freelance business work. I
often create character or place names, or even just fake words, but I want
to mark them as correct to the spellchecker for all the documents that take
place in that "world." Word allows for multiple dictionaries, but no way to
specify which dictionary goes with which document or template, right? That's
just dumb, isn't it? Am I missing something?

What is the point of a template if it doesn't encapsulate up to and
including everything that's needed to define how documents based on it will
work. Frankly, I'd think the dictionary and AutoText entries are more likely
to be document-centric than something like toolbars. And can't even the
toolbars be linked to the template (or am I thinking of WordPerfect - which
is just the king of in-document configuration, including embedding code in
the text itself)?

Sorry for the rant. If anyone has any advice or suggestions, I'd welcome
them.

Thanks,
Colin