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
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29 Responses to “How to hide text in MS Word 2007”
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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
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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
Great Article. Thanks
Hey! Text will still be visible if Show/Hide is activated (Ctrl + *)
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.
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!
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.
I am trying to understand why you’d ever need hidden text in a document. Anyone?
Reply to Happy:
There are two good uses we have for hidden text:
1) Instructions in ‘pro-forma’ documents, such as in a technical spec where all the headings are mandated you can add a bit of hidden text under each one saying what should be typed into the section and what needn’t be for instructions to users. This also helps reviewers as they can check the invisible instructions (still in the document) against the content.
2) In the same vein, if you want to have a letter set up which makes you start below the heading on pre-printed headed paper you can set up a large ‘Header’ (so your body text starts in the right place) and put in hidden text to remind people why it’s there without it actually printing (use in conjunction with ‘show hidden text’ so the user sees the reminder!)
If one suspects there is hidden text, one can always extract the ascii/unicode text (strings), or look at it with a hex editor, etc. It’s some level of protection, but I wouldn’t be hiding anything *really* sensitive.
Am tring to do a CD where opening hidden text is an option for the viewer. In some documents I have read there appears to be a balloon that you can click to view the additional information if you wish.
@Martino – you need to look for “Hidden” as akishore explains (but not Show/Hide Hidden Text).
“M said on : August 28th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Hey! Text will still be visible if Show/Hide is activated (Ctrl + *)”
Great tip!
I was trying to find a way to keep it visible with Word 2007 and could neither do it (for some reason Shift+Crtl H was highlighting the text, although highlight was set for Crtl+alt H) nor could I find help on… hum… Help.
For word counting purposes, to see if I still had room for that little extra bit of bright ideas
Awsome, thank you very much!
Is it a good idea to use a Word document to store passwords and then hide them using the method you mentioned?
Great article! I have one question though…can someone tell that text was hidden in the document? So if I hide some text and then send the file to a buddy, will there be any way for them to know that text is hiddden? Thanks.
Thank you very much! Hiding text in Word is a pretty neat trick.
Is there anyway to show hidden text without showing the formatting tags? It makes it very difficult to read. Basically I want to create two modes of display. One that displays all and one that displays on summary information.
Thank you for your help.
Is there a way to hide text by Style? For instance, if I wanted to hide the section with the style “Quote” assigned, how do I do that?
Thank you so much — you’ve answered so many questions that are not available in the MS Word help!!
Two things – one I use hidden text for training documentation. The instructor sees the answers to questions, while the students only see the question (not the associated answers). So, now in 2007 I have a document with hidden text but can’t figure out how to print the instructor version with the hidden text. Help!
Is there a way when creating a Word2007 template to create word sections (group text elements -pargraphs) that can dynamically be hidden if no data is present in the fields (from a databse)? I am trying to create a Word Template that pulls in fields from SharePoint and then populates the fields (this isn’t the problem) . However, I have certain fields in SharePoint that would indicate to me whether a section should used in the the Word Template. I then want to use some control in Word 2007 that would then hide the grouped elements if the section flag was ‘no’. I am placing all sections in my template, but just need to somehow firstly group the elements together in sections, and then secondly, apply an overall switch to each dynamic section to show or hide it in the template.
Thanks, was trying the same for the last 2 days and finally found out how to hide but was stuck with how to unhide. Thanks again!
I want to hide and password protect my personal journal entries from others viewing them at all. I’m following the suggestions in this article, but not seeing results. I hide the text but it just shows a dotted underline, it does not hide the text. Even Ctrl + * just turns the underlining and paragraph marks on and off, it does not hide the text. I’ve turned off Display Hidden Text in Word Options and still no change. Can someone suggest what I may be missing?
TIA (Thanks in Advance),
DblValve
Additionally, I noticed that in Full Screen Reading, the text was hidden, but in any other view (Print Layout) it shows with the dotted underline.
There’s a new addin for Word, More, which makes it very easy to hide/show text. With More you can create a “collapsible” which is a chunk of the document plus a toggle button to hide/show that chunk. Very easy to use.
Hi,
I want to restrict editing of template/styles (normal, heading 1, heading 2). So basically if, I am writing my thesis and my template is ready, then me or my supervisors should not be able to do any changes in my pre-defined styles. I dont mind if they can add/delete/edit anything as long as it’s body of the report/thesis and not the styles.
Many thanks.. hope my query is clear.
In Word 2003 there is a button for this function “Hidden” which toogles the selected text to be hidden or not hidden. The button is highlighted when the hidden mode is activated (just like the “Bold” button.)
In Word 2007, You can add this button to your quick access toolbar from Microsoft button/Word Options/Customize, and selecting “hidden” from the list under “All Commands.” The trouble is the button does not highlight when the function is in the hidden mode so you can’t tell whether the text, etc. is hidden or not.
Is there a way to cause this button to highlight when the text selected is in the hidden mode?
Once you have Restricted Editing on a document, the highlighted regions that can be edited default to YELLOW highlight. Do you know if it is possible to change that?
There’s a template I’ve created that utilizes a certain printing format and requires a set of instructions to ensure proper results. This template will be used by several people within the office, and any newcomers that may come aboard. I would like for everyone to be able to print the template sans the instructions, as the instructions are embedded within the template itself. I know about the “hidden text” features of Word, but the problem with that is only the author of the document is able to see the hidden text unless everyone uses the Show/Hide button. Is there any other way that I may be able to format this document to hide text that anyone other than the “printer” can see without using the Show/Hide function? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.