Word TOC loses formatting

[Nancy Allison]

Hi, everyone. I'm still locked in mortal combat with Word 2003.

For this question, I've read Word MVP entries, searched Techwr-l, and 
combed through Word help.  Doubtless the discussion is somewhere, but 
I'm running out of time.

A Word MVP S. Barnhill has an article called "TOC Tips and Tricks" 
(http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/TOCTips.htm) which explained a lot. 
Following that article, I reassigned paragraph styles to TOC levels, 
because I think it's just weird that the Word default assigns Level 1 to 
both Titles and Heading 1s. The default prints my chapter titles and 
Heading 1s at the same TOC level.

You do this reassignment in Insert/References/Tables and Indexes/TOC 
tab/Options. Once I click OK and close out, those reassigned levels 
should stay. But they drop out the next time I update the TOC, and once 
again Chapter titles and Heading 1s have the same formatting, which 
looks really lousy.

There may be other formatting that's dropping out (like dot leaders to 
the tab). I am making all changes through the Format/Styles and 
Formatting command. I'm not modifying paragraphs individually.

Has anyone encountered this problem and solved it? Thanks for your help.

--Nancy