Hiding Text from View

[smcb13]

I have a document which I need to email and I want to hide some of the text
from view. When I select the text I want to hide and choose font then select
hidden, the text is underlinned but does not disappear from view. Can anyone
help?

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

If you don't want the recipient to see the text you're trying to hide,
choose File - Save As, save the file under a new name, and then delete the
bits you don't want seen. Anything you can hide, someone else can unhide.
The problem you're having demonstrates why and how.

Without knowing what version of Word you're using, precise instructions on
displaying/hiding hidden text can't be given. However, as a general matter,
Ctrl+Shift+8 usually toggles hidden on/off (as well as a number of
non-printing formatting characters).

In Word 2007, the Hidden display option can be accessed by clicking the
Office button, Word Options, Display tab.

 

[smcb13]

Herb

Thanks for the quick response. I'm using Word 2003 and unfortunately the
document I have is quite lengthy and will need to be updated regularly (both
parts that I want other people to see and parts I don't) so deleting and
resending every time will turn it into quite an arduous task. Was just
really wanting to know if there was any way of stopping people being able to
see the text electronically but I guess the clear answer seems to be that
there's not.

In comparison to Excel where you can hide information and lock cells this is
the same sort of effect that I am trying to achieve within a Word doc.

Can I assume this isn't possible? I have even tried saving with a password
so it has to be opened as read only but find that the text stills shows
anyway....

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi SMCB

I have a document which I need to email and I want to hide some of the text
from view. When I select the text I want to hide and choose font then select
hidden, the text is underlinned but does not disappear from view. Can anyone
help?

you probably are displaying hidden text (and all other sorts of
non-printing characters): hit the Pilcrow symbol (looks a bit like a
greek letter Pi) or go into View Options.

Be advised that, if you don't want your recipient to read this special
text, you should certainly _delete_ it from the file. Anything else will
not work out reliably.

2cents
Robert

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Excel is a lot more flexible in that regard. I can conceive of approaches
that would give you what you want, but they are all more involved than
deleting the text you don't want seen.

One easier alternative would be to create one or more dedicated styles that
you apply to the text you don't want seen and to always use that style. This
would allow you to quickly use Find/Replace to delete that text from the
document when you want to send it out. This is really no different from the
hidden text option, except that you would be using the fact that special
formatting is applied as a tool for quickly deleting it. The same could be
done using the hidden attribute, but since hidden is also used for some Word
features (such as marking index entries), I think that a dedicated style
(could be character or paragraph, depending on the nature of the deletions)
would be more flexible.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com

 

[Jay Freedman]

That's correct -- it isn't possible in a Word document to prevent someone
from seeing _anything_ that is stored in the document, regardless of how you
try to hide it.

Maintain one copy of the document that you never send to anyone else. For
material that you don't want others to see, either format it as Hidden or
apply a specific style to it that you don't use for anything else.

When it's time to send the document out, make a copy with File > Save As. In
the copy, use the Replace function. Click the More button. Click in the Find
What box; then click the Format button and choose either Font > Hidden or
Style > the name of the special style. Leave both the Find What and Replace
With boxes empty and click the Replace All button. That will remove all the
text that was marked. Save the copy and send that.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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