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How to hide or unhide selected text in message body

Author Kelly Last modified

This tutorial talks about hiding the selected text in the message body when you are composing, replying, or forwarding an email in Outlook, and unhiding the hidden text in the message body as well.

Note: Methods introduced on this page apply to Microsoft Outlook 2019 desktop program in Windows 10. And the instructions may vary significantly or slightly depending on the version of Microsoft Outlook and the Windows environments.

Hide selected text in message body

You can quickly hide the selected text in the message body in the message editing window as follows:

1. In the message body, select the text you will hide.

2. Click the anchor at the bottom-right corner of the "Font" dialog on the "Format Text" tab to open the Font dialog.
Tips: you can also press "Ctrl" + "D" keys together to open the Font dialog.

3. In the Font dialog, enable the "Font" tab, and check the "Hidden" option in the "Effects" section, and click the "OK" button.

Then the selected text in the message body disappears.

Unhide the hidden text in message body

If you need to disable the hidden formatting and display the specified hidden text, you can do as follows:

1. Click the "Show/Hide Editing Marks" button in the "Paragraphs" group on the "Format Text" tab to show all paragraph marks and formatting symbols. Tips: You can also press "Ctrl" + "*" keys to enable the "Show/Hide Editing Marks" feature.

2. Now you will see the hidden text marked with a dotted underline. Please select the specified hidden text you will unhide.

3. Click the anchor at the bottom-right corner of the "Font" dialog on the "Format Text" tab to open the Font dialog.
Tips: you can also press "Ctrl" + "D" keys together to open the Font dialog.

4. In the Font dialog, enable the "Font" tab, untick the "Hidden" option, and click the "OK" button.

Now the specified hidden text displays regularly.

You can click the "Show/Hide Editing Marks" button on the "Format Text" tab (or press "Ctrl" + "*" keys) again to hide all paragraph marks and formatting symbols.

Unhide all hidden text in the message body

If you have hidden multiple pieces of text in the current message body, you can easily unhide all of them as follows:

1. Put the cursor at the message body, and press "Ctrl" + "A" keys to select the whole message body.

2. Click the anchor at the bottom-right corner of the "Font" dialog on the "Format Text" tab to open the Font dialog.
Tips: you can also press "Ctrl" + "D" keys together to open the Font dialog.

3. In the Font dialog, enable the "Font" tab, untick the "Hidden" option, and click the "OK" button.

Now all hidden text in the current message body displays regularly.

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