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?
Toggle to show or hide all hidden text in Word
Permanently show or hide all hidden text in Word
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.

Kutools for Word: a powerful add-in contains 100+ tools, and it can boost 80% work efficiency in your Word daily working! Get It Now!
Amazing! Use Efficient Tabs in Word (Office) like Chrome, Firefox and New Internet Explorer!
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:
Recommended Word Productivity Tools
Kutools For Word - More Than 100 Advanced Features For Word, Save Your 50% Time
- Complicated and repeated operations can be done one-time processing in seconds.
- Insert multiple images across folders into Word document at once.
- Merge and combine multiple Word files across folders into one with your desired order.
- Split the current document into separate documents according to heading, section break or other criteria.
- Convert files between Doc and Docx, Docx and PDF, collection of tools for common conversions and selection, and so on...











