Desperately Seeking Hidden Text...Part 3

Here's an interesting wrinkle. When attempting to hide text, if you happen to select text--for example, text with a heading style applied--and the text has an embedded page break, you get one big blank page smack in the middle of the document. Not exactly the result you want.

So what's the solution? Do a local change to the heading style and then hide the text. If you need to review page breaking, see How many ways can you break a page? 

Desperately Seeking Hidden Text...Part 2

If you plan to use hidden text all the time, you can make selections that cause all hidden text in a document to appear when you open the document. The setting is personal in that it works in your personal copy of Word. If readers of your document do not have the option turned on, they won't see the hidden text.

Selecting the Option in Word 2007/2010

1. Open Word Options.
   --Word 2010: Click File, and then Options.
   --Word 2007: Click the Office Button, and then click the Word Options button.
   --Word 2003: Click Tools, and then Options. On the View tab, locate the Formatting marks group. 
2. Click the Hidden text check box, and then click OK. Hidden text will appear automatically in any document you open. 

The Less Obvious Option--or--the Weasel move...

If you have text that you absolutely do not want anyone to read, here's an option. Select the text and change the font color to white (or whatever the background color is) so that the text simply can't be distinguished from the background.

1. Highlight the text. 
2. Open the Font dialog.
   --Word 2007/2010: Go to the Home tab, locate the Font group, click the drop-down arrow (dialog launcher) in the lower right of the group box.
   --Word 2003: Select Format, and then Font. 
3. Click the drop-down arrow in the Font color field to display the color palette.
4. Pick white as the color, and then click OK. 

If you pick text in the middle of a paragraph, the text will simply disappear but the space for the text will remain. For anyone who knows this trick, it's a hint to them to simply highlight the area, open the Font dialog and pick a color to display the text. So, if you decide to use this method, you might want to make sure you have the text on a line by itself or in an out of the way place like a footer or a header. 

I'll ponder for a while to see if I remember any more about using hidden text. Like so many things with Word, it's the little things that can matter at the oddest of moments. But, if you've played with the option, you have a better chance of remembering that it's there when you need it. 

Desperately Seeking Hidden Text...Part 1

I like to hide text in my documents. There I've said it! It's out there!

I hide text because I have a terrible memory. For example, I might add the path to a file in the footer of a document and then hide the text. When I send the document to someone and then get it back, I might or might not want to overwrite my original file if the file name is the same. If I don't want to overwrite the file, I have to be able to find the original file. I can reveal the file path in the footer and get a memory boost on where I tucked that file away.

Another instance when I might hide text is when I write a note to myself that I don't want other readers to see.

The only time that a reader knows the hidden text is there is if they know how to reveal it...and not many people know how to reveal it.

Creating Hidden Text

1. Open a Word document with text in it.
2. Select some text that you want to hide.
3. Open the Font dialog.
   --Word 2007/2010, go to the Home tab, locate the Font group, click the drop-down arrow (dialog launcher) in the lower right of the group box.
   --Word 2003, select Format, and then Font.
   The Font dialog appears.
4. In the Effects group, click the option Hidden, and then click OK. The text disappears.

Revealing Hidden Text

• Select the area that the hidden text is in and repeat the steps above to display the Font dialog and remove the check mark from the dialog. Select OK and the text is visible again. The check box might have a square in it, which indicates that some of the selected text has Hidden applied while other selected text does not have the attribute applied.

--OR--

• Select the area that the hidden text is in, hold down the Ctrl key, and press the spacebar once. The text is visible again because you removed local formatting. Long time readers of this blog will remember me going on and on about local formatting versus global formatting. If you want to review, see  Global Changes vs. Local Changes.

--OR--

•  Select the Show/Hide button. See Hidden Word Codes for more information on the button. The text simply appears. If you click the Show/Hide button again (it's a toggle like a light switch with on/off positions), the text disappears again. Casual users usually don't know about the Show/Hide button and so they won't know about the hidden text using it can reveal.

Next Post
I'll continue talking about what you can do with hidden text.