I am using a customised ‘reference.docx’, which I created with the command ‘pandoc -o custom-reference.docx --print-default-data-file reference.docx’ and added individual styles for titles and subtitles. This file worked perfectly in Pandoc version 3.1.12 and formatted the title and subtitle as desired (e.g. frame with background colour and custom text colour).

However, after upgrading to Pandoc 3.5, the problem arises that titles and subtitles lose their formatting and the default formatting is used instead. The content is output correctly, but without the assigned formatting. This suggests that Pandoc may no longer recognise the custom styles or that the assignment of metadata to styles has been changed.

I am using a German version of Microsoft Word, so the style names in my ‘reference.docx’ file may correspond to the localised German names. Since I updated directly from Pandoc 3.1.12 to 3.5, I can't say exactly from which version the problem occurred. However, downgrading to 3.1.12 fixes the problem, so there seems to be a change in the newer Pandoc versions that affects the style assignment for metadata.

Regards
Stefan