Ok, I have a couple of issues related to this.

We have a problem where students were given a file to format and when the
instructor opened up their completed assignments, all the formatting had been
changed to reflect HIS normal dot.  After reading this posting, we thought
we'd discovered the problem (the initial file did in fact have this option
checked) , however when I try to reproduce the problem (see steps below) I
could not.

These are the steps I followed to convince myself that the Automatic
updating option was the cause of the problem:

1 - Created a new file
2 - Created a heading
3 - Updated the style of the heading
4 - Ensured that the Automatic Updating was checked off, as described in
this posting.
5 - Saved the file
6 - Reopened the file.

You would expect that the heading style would revert back to that which was
in the normal.dot file, but it didn't.

The next issue is this:  How the heck can we get the student's file back to
showing all the formatting that they did?  I know that if the file was saved
since the formatting was lost, then there's no hope.  However, if we open up
the file for the first time and discover the error, can we somehow retrieve
the student's formatting if we don't save it?  I would think we'd have to
somehow change the Automatic Update option WITHOUT actually opening the
document!  Hmmmmm....

Help!