How to hide text in MS Word 2007

Posted on August 25, 2008 at 5:31 am

Word 2007 has a cool feature whereby you can completely hide any text in the document so that it’s not visible. When you hide text, it’s as if the text never existed, meaning whatever space the text took up in the document, that is also removed.

In this article I will show you how to hide text in Word, how to view hidden text, and how to hide text and make sure others can’t see it.

Hide text in Word 2007

First open any document you might have that has a fair amount of text in it. Here’s what my document looks like before I hide any text.

Highlight the text that you would like to hide and then right-click and choose Font.

In the Font dialog box, you’ll see the Hidden checkbox in the Effects section. Go ahead and check that.

Click OK and POOF, your text is now gone! All I am left with is one paragraph and no sign of the first paragraph.

View Hidden Text in Word

Ok that’s great, but how the heck do you get your hidden text back into view!? It’s pretty easy actually. Press CTRL + A to highlight the text in the entire document and then right-click on a highlighted portion and choose Font again. This time you will see the Hidden checkbox does not have a check mark in it, but is instead fully green.

Clicking on it once will change it into a check mark, which means all the text in the document would be hidden and clicking on it again will remove the check mark, meaning no text in the document should be hidden.

Now my first paragraph comes back in the selected region. So that’s great, but how do you prevent others from doing this and viewing the hidden text? Well that’s easy too. You can just protect the document so no one can change the formatting and editing. That way, if they can’t change any formatting, they won’t be able to unhide the text even if they know how to do it. It will allow them to view the document, but restrict access to all other editing features.

Click on the Review tab and click on Protect Document at the far right. Choose Restrict Formatting and Editing.

Click the Limit formatting to a selection of styles and click on the Settings button.

Check the box again and click on None to make sure nothing can be changed in terms of formatting and style.

Click OK and then check the box Allow only this type of editing in the document and leave it as No Changes.

Finally, click on the Yes, Start Enforcing Protection button and enter a password to protect the Word document. Make sure the password is very long and complicated as there are lots of password crackers out there that can hack short passwords.

Your hidden text is now securely hidden and cannot be viewed unless the security password is known by the user. Enjoy!

» Filed Under MS Office Tips

Comments

9 Responses to “How to hide text in MS Word 2007”

Yusuf Kaydawala said on : August 25th, 2008 at 10:52 am

Great Article. Thanks

M said on : August 28th, 2008 at 11:14 pm

Hey! Text will still be visible if Show/Hide is activated (Ctrl + *)

John said on : September 12th, 2008 at 10:18 am

Show/Hide does not affect whether hidden text is displayed or not. It just controls the display of formatting marks like end-paragraph etc.
But there is an option to view hidden text. In Word 2003 this is at Tools | Options | View | View Hidden Text (iirc), in Office 2007 it is at Office Button | Word Options | Display.
So you should not rely on hidden text not being visible to a person you give the document to.

Martino said on : December 9th, 2008 at 10:32 am

Great article, so I’m hoping you have a solution to my problem as well: Is there any faster way of unchecking the “Show hidden text” option, then of having to click: Start button -> Word Options -> Display -> Checkbox -> OK
Can this command by added to the quick access bar somehow?
Thanks!

akishore said on : December 12th, 2008 at 11:50 am

Martino, if you right-click on the Quick Access Toolbar in Office and choose “Customize Quick Access Toolbar”, you can browse through all the commands available and see if Show/Hide Hidden Text is an option. If not, then you’re out of luck! Thanks.

Happy said on : January 24th, 2009 at 1:54 am

I am trying to understand why you’d ever need hidden text in a document. Anyone?

Serge said on : November 4th, 2009 at 11:19 am

@Martino – you need to look for “Hidden” as akishore explains (but not Show/Hide Hidden Text).

5 Killer MS Word Formatting Tips Says:

[...] section! Also, check out some of my other articles on Word, such as essential MS Word shortcuts and how to hide text in Word. Ben Carigtan writes about computers, technology and how to get the best out of [...]
September 2nd, 2008 at 5:39 am
How to hide tabs, cells, columns, and formulas in Excel Says:

[...] you’re interested, you may also want to check out my previous article on how to hide text in Word. Now let’s talk about all the stuff we can hide in [...]
September 17th, 2008 at 5:29 am