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How to show or hide all hidden text quickly in Word?

How to quickly show the hidden text just in case you forget they are actually in document?

Use toggle buttons to show or hide formatting marks and document content in Word

Kutools for Word releases a handy Display Settings feature to help users quickly to show or hide all kinds of formatting marks, and document contents in the current Word document, including hidden text, placeholders, marks, etc.


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Hide text in word

This method will guide you to hide a slice of text in a Word document. Please do as follow:

1. In the Word document, select the slice of text you will hide, right click, and select Font from the context menu. See screenshot:

2. In the Font dialog, under the Font tab, please check the Hidden option, and click the OK button. See screenshot:

Now you will see the selected slice of text is hidden from the document. See screenshot:


Show all hidden text in Word

As you see, it’s not easy to find out the hidden text in your Word document. Here, I will reverse the method introduced above, and show all hidden text in the Word document quickly.

1. Press Ctrl + A keys together to select the whole document, right click, and select Font from the context menu.

2. In the Font dialog, under the Font tab, please uncheck the Hidden option, and click the OK button. See screenshot:
Tip: when opening the Font dialog, you will get , click the checkbox for the first time, it will turn to checked , now click again, and it will be unchecked .

Now all hidden text in the whole document are shown in bulk.


Toggle to show or hide all hidden text in Word

If you just need to view the hidden text temporarily, you can use the Show/Hide button to toggle displaying or hiding all hidden text in your Word document.

Click the Show/Hide Editing Marks button ( or ) in the Paragraph group on the Home tab to show or hide the hidden text.

Note: You can also use the hotkeys Ctrl + Shift + 8 on the main keyboard to toggle displaying or hiding all hidden text easily.


Permanently show or hide all hidden text in Word

If you want to permanently show all hidden text in your Word document, you can configure Word options to get it done.

1. Click File > Options to open the Word Options dialog.

2. In the Word Options dialog, please click Display in the left bar, check the Hidden text option in the Always show these formatting marks on the screen section. See screenshot:

Note: To hide all hidden text all the time, please uncheck the Hidden text option.

3. Click the OK button to save the change.

Now you will see all hidden text is displaying with dotted underline. See screenshot:


Show or hide all hidden text in printouts

You might have noticed that the hidden text will not be printed too. If you need to show the hidden text in the printouts, you need to configure the Word options.

1. Click File > Options to open the Word Options dialog.

2. In the Word Options dialog, please click Display in the left bar, check the Print hidden text option in the Printing options section. See screenshot:

Note: To prevent from printing all hidden text, please uncheck the Print hidden text option.

3. Click the OK button.

From now on, all hidden text will also be printed too.


Show or hide hidden text with Kutools

Kutools provides you the easy way to show or hide hidden text and some other formatting marks, too.

1. Click Kutools Plus > Display Settings. See screenshot:

2. And then check Hidden Text in the pop-up dialog, and you will see the result as below screenshot shown:

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Comments (12)
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This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
that was not help ful
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Hi Sarina,
I tried the instructions listed in the artcile, they all worked properly. So, please specify which method is not helpful. And, could you please tell me what system and Word version are you using?
Thanks in advavnce.
Amanda
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I need a way to get fields, e.g. XE index fields, out of the text and in a right margin or equivalent. Having them mixed in with the text is horrible!
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I see some special characters i.e., tab character and ... symbol in word document when i click on show/hide option. Please let me know how to get rid of special characters when i click on show/hide option. PS: I checked under Options >> Display >> Tab character, Spaces are unchecked.
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is there any way to hide a paragraph of text, and then have a text button on the document, and once that is pressed have the hidden text comes up? This is for a type of informational document for work, so if anyone can help that would be great
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Bonjour Je suis intéressé par cette fonction. Pourriez vous détailler la méthode ?
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[quote]># Jaret 2014-08-04 17:21 Есть ли способ, чтобы скрыть абзац текста, а затем текстовое кнопку на документе, и как только это будет нажата есть скрытый текст приходит? Это для типа информационного документа для работы, так что если кто может помочь, что было бы здорово
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Thanks for that macro. Word does so many functions if they pack anything more into this program they'll need to install artificial intelligence to tell us where it all is! It's websites like this that are making it so easy to get questions quickly answered.
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That's no answer. We're looking for a way to toggle between hide/show text, not open a bunch of tabs and dialog boxes each time. Just one click.
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
If you click on the paragraph button in the toolbar, it will show all the hidden text immediately, along with the formatting. Clicking on that button again will hide the text and the formatting; it's a toggle.
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I just built the following Word macro to toggle between hide/show text and assigned it to a keyboard shortcut (Alt+H): Sub ShowHiddenText() ' ' ShowHiddenText Macro ' Toggle Show/Hide setting for Hidden Text ' If ActiveWindow.View.ShowHiddenText = True Then ActiveWindow.View.ShowHiddenText = False Else ActiveWindow.View.ShowHiddenText = True End If End Sub
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I need a facility in MS-Word where you can hide a portion of the text with a marker for hidden text, with a hide/unhide option just as in MS-excel. This will enable me to write a detailed document with an option for readers seeing the whole document in detail or only the open portion as a first reading. Hope you understand.
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