edited style has a ' -' (dash) before each reference yet, the dash is not present when one looks at the edited style? How do I get rid of the dash?

Problem 1 are you sure you are using the output style you think you are using in the Word document?  Can you zip up the output style and attach to a reply message.  

Problem 2 - you need to turn off the preferences to update the journal terms lists when you upload new records and then delete your current journal terms list and upload a terms list.  the instructions for this are https://support.clarivate.com/Endnote/s/article/EndNote-Generate-full-or-abbreviated-journal-names?language=en_US

(or change the output style so journals terms to not use the list at all but that will only work if all your articles truly have the full journal name in the journal field, and you don’t later want to write an article for a journal that wants abbreviations).  

And if tech support wasn’t able to help you, … I hope someone there is monitoring this forum!