Applying custom slide master layouts to slides... Is this normal?

Hi folks,

I've been building some custom slides master layouts for an office template. I have noticed two things that are perplexing. I will save one for another post. In this case I am trying to figure out how badly a user can mess up a slide and use the RESET button to pull everything back into place.

My custom slide master layout includes about three Text Placeholders in various areas of the slide. I inserted these placeholders via INSERT PLACEHOLDER int he slide master mode, and formatting the text boxes. An example: a one line column heading on the left side of the slide, a long bulleted list placeholder underneath that heading, and a second heading on the right hand side. Underneath this second heading is where a table will be placed on the surface of the slide, not on the master.

As a test, I inserted a new slide in edit mode (not slide master mode) and applied this new custom slide master layout. I put text content into these text placeholders on the surface of the slide (not the slide master). It works perfectly, and I can mess up the content as much as I want manually (i.e. moving text boxes, changing font size and color, adding weird bullets where they shouldn't be and hit RESEST and the original custom layout is reapplied. 

I am testing to see how much a user can mess up the content from the original layout and still rely on the RESET button to snap everything back in place. What I've noticed is that if I try to apply a different layout to this slide to mess it up on purpose, and then RE-APPLY my custom layout, PowerPoint gets confused and does not place my content back into the correct placeholders. For instance, what was original a header is now in the bullet list placeholder, and the content from the bulleted list becomes a header.

I think this actually makes sense: since I applied a different layout, the content loses its connection to the original placeholders, and has no way to remember which placeholders it used to be in my custom layout, so when I reapply the custom layout, the programming is kind of "guessing" which placeholders will be assigned the different pieces of content.

My question is: Has anyone ever tried this, and does it seem as though I understand this concept correctly?

(I think the moral of the story here, is that if an end-user applies the wrong layout to a slide and then tries to reapply the correct one, there is always the possibility that the content is not going to go back into the original placeholders the same way. If the placeholders are different, PowerPoint isn't smart enough to remember. So the end-users best course of action is to insert a NEW slide using the correct layout, and re-enter their content)

I GREATLY appreciate any consideration of my question re: have you tried this? is it normal? am I understanding the content correctly?

THANK YOU