We need to order custom Microsoft templates

The top 5 reasons clients decide its time.

Goat standing on a hill with a brown backdrop,and and yellow foreground.

NOVEMBER 2026

Author: Janine Morice

We design and develop many Microsoft templates throughout the course of any given year. And there are many reasons that drive the need for new templates.

Microsoft templates are an important part of any professional services, education, medical or administration function. They are also an important brand asset for your organisation, as they may be the only communication deliverable that someone sees of your brand.

In this article, we will explore the top five reasons why new Microsoft templates are needed, and also some of the issues that go along with existing templates.

1. “Our templates are broken”

This we need to unpack. I could list about 50 different things we’ve seen here, anything from Word numbering breaking through to PowerPoint slide issues.

We’ve seen many broken Microsoft templates, and we’ve also seen documents masquerading as templates too. Yes, that’s a thing.

Here are some of the reasons why Microsoft templates can be broken:

Numbering in Word breaking
‍This one deserves an insights article all of its own. Numbering in Word can be broken, or break, for many reasons, such as incorrect setup and human behaviour (yes, we humans are responsible for document issues at times). This is the biggest complaint we have seen, and it’s fixable with a robustly built template.

PowerPoint slides change fonts/font sizes when moving slides between decks
‍Ahh, a classic! This is caused by using two different templates (with different master pages) being bashed together. This WILL happen if you’re moving your clients' slides into your branded deck, but it SHOULD NOT happen within the one organisation with a suite of functional templates.

Fonts
‍Gosh, minefield. Let’s jump into the three levels:

Microsoft fonts: These are great. They work and are reliable, but they are limited in volume and design quality.
Google fonts: We’ve had mixed results with Google fonts, mostly good, but sometimes not.
Bespoke/purchased fonts: enter at your own risk. This has been the most problematic. You will also need to know that a font licence for every single user will be needed, making this an expensive choice.

For Google and Bespoke/purchased fonts:

Documents that travel outside the firm will need to have fonts embedded. This causes the template file size to blow out to multiple megabytes. This carries through to documents created from that template too.
PDFing issues can occur with non-Microsoft fonts. This can include fonts suddenly defaulting, bolding being stripped out, and formatting going awry.

Headers and footer issues
‍There could be many reasons for header and footer issues, from fields pulling in text from elsewhere in the document, to whether or not the template has been set up correctly using the ‘different first page’ and ‘link to previous’ functionality.

They’re just ugly / off-brand
‍Less broken from a technical perspective, but definitely broken from a brand perspective.

2. We just had a rebrand

This also applies to brand refreshes and new companies just starting out. Any creation of or change to visual brand identity will warrant a new suite of Microsoft templates.

Your new brand should be consistent across all visual branded collateral, including Microsoft templates.

A finished artist is responsible for a brand’s implementation, and Microsoft templates are a pivotal brand implementation item, not an afterthought. For some firms, they are the brand asset most seen by their clients. It’s your reputation that’s on the line.

At BrandOps, we are both finished artists and template developers, so we straddle that beautiful world of being able to take the creative intent and roll it through all brand implementation items.

3. We had our Microsoft templates created but they don’t work

This one gets our goat and breaks our heart at the same time.

We have been in the visual communications business for decades, and it hurts our hearts to see Microsoft templates that are not up to scratch.

We have literally rebuilt hundreds of templates after they arrive on our desks as ‘unusable’.

What Microsoft templates ARE NOT

a PDF converted to Word
exported out of Canva
a Word document

They should not be created by a novice.

What Microsoft templates ARE

a specialty product that requires heavy-duty Microsoft skills to be able to build an effective template
a product that builds for a future that cannot be seen, but one that needs to be accounted for
a product that has styles, many different types of styles, set up within them
user-friendly and accounts for organisational preferences within their documentation e.g. if you insert a caption in Word, are you expecting it to be a heading or descriptive content under your diagram
made to serve the organisation, not make the organisation a slave to them
products that should be created by an experienced Microsoft practitioner

When ordering Microsoft templates, do your due diligence on the reputation of your preferred supplier.

4. We need a Microsoft template for a new, specific purpose

We are often creating new one-off templates for organisations that are for a specific purpose.

From presentation templates for a conference to event slide presentations, or publication/annual report templates, or an important speaker presentation.

Every template has a purpose, and if your firm’s template suite isn’t covering the full body of your documentation requirements, then you might need a new specific-purpose template.

5. We want to use our templates with AI

AI is great for pulling together slides quickly. It’s not so good at making those slides look anything like your firm’s branding.

But this can be assisted with robust templates that are built with extra layers of rigour to account for AI-content population.AI needs strong foundations to have a better chance at staying within your brand parameters. These are built into the templates through hierarchy and structure-building practices.

Embedding the correct structure into a template will give AI better guardrails to stay on brand.

There are many reasons to order new Microsoft templates, and I’m feeling compelled to insert my human concern here: whatever you do, be sure to source an experienced and reputable Microsoft template developer for this job, because as noted in point 3 above, it can go horribly pear-shaped.

But it doesn’t have to.
‍

ORDER YOUR MICROSOFT TEMPLATES

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