I opened a file from my friend and now I have these brackets that piss the **** out of me when I am working in Word. They don't come out when I print, but it's just an eye sore. I can't seem to find where to turn them off. Any ideas? I'll attach a pic

Go to TOOLS and then OPTIONS or PROPERTIES or SETTING. There you will find a tab called VIEW, should be the tab that is open first. Uncheck the box called TEXT BORDER or TEXT LIMITS or something like that. That will take away those markings.
:D

Actually it was unchecked :( So there is nothing for me to select that will take it away :(

Well, check it, see what happens and uncheck it again. You might also want to try a few others of those VIEW checkboxes. I can only tell you that this was the way to get rid of those markers in the Word97, but it should be the same in the XP version.
:D

Hmm. those look like the things in publisher. What view mode are you in? Master, or something else?

I'm in print layout view. I haven't checked this board in a while :D