Dear OldGrantonian,

Unless you have some bug, I would guess that during the course of your editing you are inadvertently triggering the balloons. I assume that this is happening in all documents. How you might be doing this may take a little sleuthing to discover. However, you might make a copy of your document, for convenience, and then change the view so that you can see at least two pages. If you don't have formatting balloons already, change some formatting, then remove the balloon display as you have been. Then, begin making edits slowly and carefully until the balloons reappear. You may be able to determine exactly what you have just done that may have triggered the event. See if it is repeatable. It could be a particular combination of characters, especially if your Alt key is pressed by mistake.

Best,
Ulodesk