Office Word: Suddenly has boxes around everything I type. I can't find how to remove them

I’ve had a Microsoft 365 Family subscription for years. I have installed and used Microsoft Word on my laptop all that time. When I previously opened a new, blank Word document a literally blank document open (as it should). One day, a few months ago, that changed, and I can’t figure out why or how to fix it to go back to the way it should be.

KEY POINTS OF THIS MICROSOFT WORD ISSUE:

The following is what happens when I use Microsoft word now. I open Microsoft Word on my laptop and select: File New Blank document

There will then be one box (for lack of a better description) at the top of an otherwise blank document.

  1. If I type one continuous sentence, the box continues. If the sentence is 17 lines long, then it's one big box.
  2. If I get to the end of the available space on the right side of the page, and press enter
    then another box begins, opposed to continuing. It looks like a page of thin horizontal rectangles around all of my sentences. 3. If I use Word while online via my 365 account, this "box issue" has never happened.

Please help me figure out how to fix this issue!! It’s maddening that I can’t use Word correctly. It’s just as maddening that I can’t find the answer when I’ve searched in the Microsoft Word Help feature.

Thank you… I greatly appreciate any input, michael-grace

Word Management

Word: A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents. Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.