Why does repeating text in a Word file via content controls or StyleRef produces...

Question 1

Objective: Get text from the front sheet of a Wrd file to auto-populate in all headers.
Attempt 1: Via Style Ref
Attempt 2: Via content control fields

Steps taken:

Insert content control text.
Name and title the above.
Select it correctly and copy.
Paste special (Paste Link > Unformatted text).

Result: Both work as intended for the first couple of tries but than stop auto-updating.

Question 2

The simplest method is using Mapped Content Controls.

You can find all known methods for replicating data in Greg Maxey's page on that topic. I am not going into all of them here. I will go into his number 7 method. This is how some of the better Microsoft templates use Cover Pages in their templates.

I talked about this in my answer here in Super User. It is the subject of my page on Repeating Data Using Document Property Content Controls and Other Mapped Content Controls. The following comes from that page.

Document Property Content Controls

You can insert Document Property Content Controls using Insert > Quick Parts > Text > Document Property. Here the same controls are shown in Word 2010, 2019, and 2021. The Ribbon tab looks a bit different but these Document Property Content Controls are on the Insert Tab under Quick Parts.

There are 15 choices, some of which correspond to the summary document properties. Here, though, we are not using them for that. We are using them to repeat data. Fourteen are plain-text controls and the Publish Date control is a Date-Picker control (but can hold plain text as well).

I recommend using Abstract, Publish Date, and Status first. Here is an example:

This does not seem very useful until you see that you can modify these by using the Developer Tab and choosing Properties. That will let you change the tab at the top from "Abstract" to whatever you want, i.e., "First Party Name".

Then you can use Developer Mode to change the placeholder text.

And, with the Developer Mode turned off we see:

Remember to click out of Developer Mode when you are done. Once you have these text changes made, you can replicate the information throughout your document by using the same document property controls. If you insert them directly as you did the first time, they will have their original titles. However, if you instead copy and paste, you will get your new titles. When information is changed in one location, it changes throughout the document in the same document property content controls.

Here is the same thing with the fields filled in. When you tab out of a content control after editing it, the same control changes throughout the document.

There is more on my page but that gives you the idea if you want to use the built-in "Document Property" Content Controls.

You can also create your own Mapped Content Controls.

Here is a link to a video by Laura Townsend that takes you step-by-step on what is needed to do this.

There are links on my page to free utilities that will do the mapping for you.

This is much harder on the Mac.

While the Mac version can use Content Controls, it cannot create or edit them within the User Interface. It can use the plain text, rich text, and date picker controls, at least. The general advice for Mac users is to try to develop templates doing this in the Windows version if they can. Here is a document with Content Controls generated in the Windows version that you can try in the Mac.

If you need to do this in the Mac user interface, see Content Controls for the Mac OS by John Korchok.