Section breaks sit in the body of the document and are quite easy to delete. If you have Word's formatting display turned on (clicking the ¶ symbol on the Ribbon's Home tab toggles it on/off), the appear as '=====' across the page, though sometimes, if they're at the end of a line, you might only see them if you switch to draft view.

As for the template message, what is the extension of the file you're opening, and how are you opening it?

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]