How do I get rid of a black box that shows up around my text on word?

Before anyone here can give you an exact answer, we need to know whether you're using Word for the Web in your browser, or desktop Word. There are things you can do in the desktop version that aren't available in the browser version.

There are many things in Word that look like a black box, so a screenshot of what you're seeing will be helpful. Here are a few of them, with suggestions of how to remove them. Some of the suggestions don't apply to the browser version.

• A "text boundary", if enabled in the Options dialog, surrounds each paragraph. To remove it, click File > Options > Advanced, scroll to the "Show document content" section, and clear the check box for the "Show text boundaries" option.

• A "text box", which can be created by clicking Insert > Text Box > Draw Text Box and dragging diagonally with the mouse. Something that's functionally the same is a Rectangle object created by clicking Insert > Shapes, selecting the rectangle icon in the menu, and dragging. To remove either kind, click on an edge of the object so the selection circles appear, and press the Delete key.

• A "content control", which is created by clicking Developer and either the Plain Text content control icon or the Rich Text content control icon. (The Developer ribbon is hidden by default, and must be enabled in the Options > Customize Ribbon dialog.) To remove it, right-click inside the box and click "Remove Content Control" in the menu.

• A "border" around specific text, a paragraph, or a page, inserted from any of several Borders buttons that open the Borders and Shading dialog. That button appears in the Paragraph section of the Home ribbon, the Page Background section of the Design ribbon (where it's labeled "Page Borders"), the Picture Styles section of the Picture Format ribbon, and the Shape Styles section of the Shape Format ribbon (if the selected shape is a rectangle, and using the Shape Outline button). To remove any of these, go to the appropriate button and choose "No Color" in the menu.