Hide text in Word

Unhide all hidden text in Word

Toggle to temporarily show or hide hidden text in Word

Configure Word to always show or hide hidden text

Print hidden text in Word documents

Show or hide hidden text or any specific formatting marks with Kutools

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.

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:

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.

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.

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:

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.

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: