When I compile to a Word document, I do not get the default template and have to tweak it every time. If I start a word doc from scratch, it uses the right template. How can I get Scrivener to export to Word using its Normal template.
BTW, complies to PDF work perfectly.
Scrivener has no knowledge of Word’s “normal” template, or even whether Word is installed on your system. It doesn’t refer to it at all when compiling to a Word document.
The alternatives are to adjust Scrivener’s own Compile format to achieve the formatting you want, or to have Word apply the desired template when it first opens the file. For the second, consult Word’s documentation. For the first, see Chapter 24 in the Scrivener manual.
Katherine
Thought you’d say that 
In case others are forced to use that beast, it’s not as awful as I thought, The problem turned out to be my formatting in Scrivener itself. For some reason, I’d changed one of the margins and Word dutifully reproduced it.
The trick is to name the paragraph styles in Compile exactly like the ones your Word template uses. In the out of the box normal.dot that would be Heading 1, Heading 2 etc. But it works with customized templates too.
Then you open a new document based on your preferred template and add the compiled document to it. Then Word will override possible different formattings of the compiled document. At least if it’s in the mood to do so …