Finding hidden text in microsoft word how to#

This could be great if, for example, you have a document that was to be printed for an audience but contained notes just for you. If you want to print a document without a particular section of text showing up, you can do that with hidden text but you need to make sure you have turned off the option to print with hidden text. Why would you want to hide text?īelieve it or not, hiding text does have its uses. It is not a security course of action and no one should ever rely on hidden text to prevent someone from reading what has been hidden. Since the hidden text is just standard text with formatting marks applied, anyone that edits the document can search for the hidden text and display it. The text isn’t removed, a formatting mark that means “don’t display this text” is applied. Microsoft Word hides text by using formatting marks, the same way you would format text as Bold or Italic. Let’s explore what hidden text is, what it isn’t and why you may want to hide text. It might come off as unnecessary because why doesn’t one just delete the text if they don’t want it to read? Great question but you should know that hidden text does have its function. All the answers are in a character style cunningly called ‘Answers’.Microsoft Word allows you to hide text so that you can read or print the document like the text isn’t there. Hidden is a formatting option in Styles so you can switch all text in a certain style from visible to hidden in a flash. hide two pages and the doc page count drops). Pagination and page counts ignore hidden text when it’s not visible on the page (e.g. Word Counts ignore hidden text (visible or not). Most Word features treat hidden text like it doesn’t exist. If you’re searching a document with hidden text, make sure Show All is ON. Hidden text only appears in a Find when the text is visible on the page. Note that Control+Shift+H will not work for unhiding all the hidden text at once, because this is the equivalent to ticking the Hidden box, and will hide all of the text in your document, and hitting the same keys again won’t unhide the whole document, because it is no longer selected! If you do make this mistake, don’t panic – just type Control+A again to select all of your text and then you can use Control+Shift+H to make it appear again. This time you will have to tick on the box twice – the first click will tick the box and hide all text, and the second click will untick it to unhide all the text. Then, in the Effects group, tick the Hidden box and click OK. Click the arrow at the bottom right of the Font group on the Home tab.To hide a piece of text, select the text that you want to hide and either: There’s a trick to leaving space for answers that we’ll explain as well as using a style to quickly manage hidden text. Of course, text is normally Unhidden and Visible. Text or objects can be Hidden and Invisible (above left) or Hidden and Visible (above right). As you can see above right, text can be at the same time both Hidden (with dots underneath) and Visible (shows on the screen) Visible – means that text appears on the screen or page. Unhidden – just means turning off the Hidden setting, which is the usual way. It can be applied in the Font dialog or part of a style. Hidden – is a text attribute, like Bold, Italics, Subscript etc. The terms Hidden and Visible have specific meanings in Word and the difference is important. Hidden vs Visibleīefore we go any further, lets clarify some terms used in Word. Students quiz (left) and Teachers version (right) from the same document.

Use hidden text to hide the answers for a questions only version of the same document. Instead of having two documents, one with the questions only and other with questions & answers. You are only hiding it for convenience or aesthetic purposes, not to keep it away from prying eyes.Ī common use of hidden text is for a quiz.

This is not a security measure – anyone with access to the document can display hidden text and search for it. Well, you might want the option to print the document without some of the text showing, or you might want different versions of the document for different people to work on without being distracted by unnecessary content. Why would you want to do hide text or other elements? Hidden text positioning and formatting tricks in Word Why hide?

Finding hidden text in microsoft word how to#

We have recently discussed how to show hidden formatting characters in Word, but it is also possible to hide text and even images in Microsoft Word, as long as you are using Word desktop on Windows or Mac.