I need to open this in a debugger and walk the drawing list to confirm this, but this is what I suspect happens:

Symbol definitions are kind of a separate drawing, and when you edit a symbol, the editor locks you down to the insides of that symbol definition, with no access to outside resources.

So, when you place your self-exploding symbol into the editor window, there doesn't exist a definition for it there. And even if a symbol is set to explode on placement, it is still placed as a symbol, causing the symbol definition to be copied into the definition of your symbol. The symbol itself is exploded, but the definition is still there.

Now, when you exit the symbol editor and go back to the drawing, suddenly everything is available again, leaving you with 2 definitions of the same symbol, one in the main drawing, and one inside the definition of your table.

So, how to deal with this. Many ways really, choose one of them:

• Just delete the duplicate symbol from the catalog. Yes, this removes both, but you can then reinsert the non-exploding original if you want it there
• Before closing the symbol editor window, bring up the symbol manager, as that will just display the definitions inside that definition, and delete it from there. The symbol manager should ideally be blank when opened from within a symbol editor window.
• Don't edit symbols this way. Define everything in your main drawing instead, remember to explode everything, and then use Symbols -> define symbol to define a symbol from the selected entities in your drawing

The hyperlink consists of 2 entities, the link itself (Which is normally invisible when you load the map, make it visible by View -> Show Hyperlinks), and a purple rectangle which just shows where the hyperlink is.

Both of these can be deleted by the regular erase command, BUT the HYPERLINK layer may be frozen, in which case you need to thaw it before you can erase it.

Also note that they should also both be on the LINKS sheet, so you can also just hide (or delete) that sheet.

If you press Ctrl+T you toggle between the crosshair cursor and the arrow cursor. This can be done mid-command based on your needs. Note that it doesn't apply to the first point of each command (don't know why it's like that), but to all subsequent points, so if you're drawing a path, the initial node will always be placed using the crosshair cursor, but you can toggle for all the subsequent ones.

Also note that if you use it in the middle of a drawing tool that has the trace capability (like the landmass tool), the shortcuts conflict, so it then asks you for "entity to trace" but you can just right click at this point to go back to the drawing instead of tracing. To avoid it, you can use the menu option (Tools -> Drawing Aids -> Toggle Crosshairs) instead of the shortcut key.

Install order doesn't really matter anymore. The only thing to be aware of is that some add-ons require the latest update, so it is usually smart to do CC3+ -> latest update -> everything else -> latest update again (because it will update some of the files you just installed from the add-ons) [and yea, ignoring the message that you already have a later version.]

Assuming your friends don't have CC3+, the standard way would be to just export it as an image from the save as dialog. (See page 47 of thr User manual for details about the procedure). Optionally, you can print it to a pdf file instead, all modern versions of Windows comes with a virtual pdf printer installed you can print to to generate a pdf file.