Fixing a Template That Renders Inconsistently

A template renders inconsistently when the document is inconsistent in a way you cannot see while writing it. Word will happily let one heading be a real Heading 2 and the next be normal text made bold and bigger. On screen they are identical. To the generator, one is a heading and the other is a sentence in bold, and they will not come out the same.

Hold formatting on styles

• Headings should be Heading 1, 2 and 3, not larger bold text.
• Command output and requests should carry a code style, not a manually chosen monospace font.
• Lists should be real Word lists. A line beginning with a hyphen is a sentence beginning with a hyphen.
• Let the style carry font, size and colour. Overriding those on individual paragraphs is what makes two sections that look alike behave differently.

This is not pedantry about Word. Formatting held on a style is the formatting that survives the trip out to Word and back into the portal, because a style is something the file states and direct formatting is something it merely shows.

Why it matters twice over

Reports are generated with invisible markers, edited in Word, and uploaded back, with every change listed for you to tick or ignore. What returns correctly is whatever the document expressed structurally: a real heading, a listing carrying the code style, a table that is a table. A heading faked with bold text returns as a bold sentence, because that is all it ever was.

Working through a specific problem

• Generate the same report twice. Identical files mean the template is deterministic and the problem is in the document, not the platform.
• Put the cursor in the offending paragraph and read the style name in the Word ribbon. It is often not the style you assumed.
• Clear formatting on that paragraph and reapply the style. This fixes more cases than everything else here combined.
• If a placeholder did not fill, check its spelling against the Placeholder Key for that kind of document (Settings, PDF & DOCX, Document Templates). An unknown placeholder is left alone rather than guessed at, which is why it survives into the output looking untouched.

A template built in the Document Builder starts from a file like this, so the same rules apply to the document you drop in. If you are starting from nothing, the free penetration test report template uses Word’s own heading and list styles.