Stencil stay with template when sharing file?

[abssorb]

I need to make a template for others, and I'm trying to get it to operate like the Visio supplied templates in that it opens a specific stencil I've designed to go with the template.

But when I provide the template to others on the LAN for them to populate the template with their information, the stencil is missing.  I've tried placing the stencil on a shared drive, opening it from there and saving the template, but that's not ideal.  What happens then is if someone is working remotely on a laptop, the stencil is missing again - anmd remains missing when they reconnect to the LAN the next day.

So the next idea is to distibute the stencil so that each user has a copy in their "my shapes" folder. And if it's the same name I assumed the template would pick up the stencil as though it were on my PC. But that doesn't work either.

I found a document stencil suggestion in search, but this option feels like a workaround. 
http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=1283.0

Our stencil has 'official' shapes on it and is issued with version number control, I can't picture how to control this using the document stencil.


Can anyone advise how I can permanently attach a stencil to a template?  Thanks!

(Visio 2003)