I use, love, and adore Open Office, so let me try.

In View, you can choose Web layout or Page Layout. It sounds like you are on Page Layout, and it's showing you the literal pages as they would be printed. Try switching to Web Layout and see if that works better.

I don't know how to turn the borders off on Page Layout, but you can go to the lower right corner to the Zoom bar, and click up until the borders go out of view.