You need to back up and learn Word before you start trying to program it.
Otherwise you are going to be reinventing the wheel and having Word's
built-in features work against you. You could start with basic formatting
and styles from my users guide web site or with Shauna Kelly's web site.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/index.html

Specifically:
Templates http://addbalance.com/usersguide/templates.htm

The expected and good result from using a document template is a new
document which contains all the text in your template and all its
formatting. It has access to any code or other interface modifications
contained in the template but does not, itself, have these elements.

Form from the Forms toolbar: What you are talking about is what Word calls
an "online form." Check this in help. For more about online forms, follow
the links at http://addbalance.com/word/wordwebresources.htm#Forms or
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/FillinTheBlanks.htm especially Dian
Chapman's series of articles. You may also want to look at
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFldsFms/LinesInForms.htm.

These only work when the document is protected for forms. When it is
protected for forms, your code can't do much with it. Your code can
unprotect and reprotect as needed, but you need to understand what happens
when you do this.

Word is not the best for collaborative documents but does work. To lock
something from other users, you would want it to be a document rather than a
template. Then only one person can have it open at a time.

"checkboxes in MAIN group headers" This group of words sends chills down my
spine. Fields from the Forms toolbar do not belong in Word headers. Period,
ever. I don't know what you are trying to express here.

You may want to look into a UserForm to gather your data and implement
changes rather than using protected forms. But again, before you try
programming Word, you need to learn it, comprehensively. People can afford
to waste a bit of their own time recording macros and learning code, because
in the long term, this can save them time. However, if you are writing code
for others to use, you are going to be wasting their time and causing them
trouble unless you know what you are doing. You will end up making them
angry; hopefully, their anger will be directed at you rather than at using
computers.

Please do not take this personally. I am sure you are a very good
programmer, but Word is an incredibly rich and complex environment in which
to be programming. In some ways it is like being a very good Boy Scout
plopped down in the middle of a dark powerless explosives factory in a war
zone. He's cold and it is dark. The Boy Scout knows how to light a fire but
doesn't know about the explosives ... The first question is whether a fire
is a good idea, but the Boy Scout doesn't know that this is the first
question because no one told him about the explosives. That is overly
dramatic, but the idea is that if you don't know the Word object model
before you start programming it for others, you have no idea what problems
your code could cause or what short cuts are already built-in. If you don't
do this, it should cost you and your supervisor your jobs! This is the sort
of situation where time spent learning will be repaid exponentially; code
written absent the learning will be a black hole that will suck up your time
and that of your users.

People here will be glad to share their experience with you and help you,
but they can't do your job for you.

Finally, if you are going to use Automatic Numbering of any sort in your
documents, see: How to create numbered headings or outline numbering in your
Word document
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html. (For
bullets see http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/bullets/controlbullets.html, the
subject is related.)

This is based on ...

Word's Numbering Explained
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Numbering/WordsNumberingExplained.htm

Hope this helps,

Just a thought -- a crumb of information, as it were -- if you
double-left-click to open the template, it will open as Document 1 in Word.  
If you right-click to open the template, the template itself will open for
editing.  I can't envision how a template that creates a new document based
on the template could be used collaboratively.  But, I only read your request
and Charles's answer a couple of times, so I hope I'm not off-track here.

Lesley

I too apologize for not being irritated in my post.  Charles, you helped more
than you know.  As I stated earlier, I have looked at all of the links and
tutorials I could find before I began creating this document.  The site you
gave me (Shauna Kelly) some how clicked the light bulb on in my head.

I had everything set up correctly and the reason I posted EXACTLY what I was
trying to do is because I thought that had an impact on the problem I was
experiencing.  Even before you posted again I had figured out the problem but
you were right.  I did not have the document did not have any code behind it
and THAT was the main problem.  After reading the information on Shauna
Kelly's website, I realized this and I exported the macro's from the template
and imported them to the document and it has been working like a charm.

I did tell you that I wanted to put the document on a network location so
multiple users in the group could access it.  As long as it was only on my
computer it was working, but then the template was there as well.  When I
emailed it or put it in a folder on the network, it would not work.  

I do appreciate all the assistance and I did want to let you know that,
regardless of how I took your comments, you were trying to help and you did.  
THANK YOU!