Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 18, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021
If you have a document full of hidden text, you may wonder how to convert all that text so it is non-hidden. The answer is to use Word's Find and Replace feature. Follow these steps:
Figure 1. The Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
Figure 2. The Find Font dialog box.
This series of steps finds all the text in the document that has the Hidden attribute set. It then turns off the attribute, so that none of your text is hidden any more.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (12252) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Replacing Hidden Text.
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2023-02-18 06:15:59
Tom
Hi Allen,
Thanks for Word Tips - I always find them interesting, even if I am not really at the level to use a lot of them. The reversing hidden text activity seemed a bit tricky, so I had a bit of a play. I seem to be able to do it by Ctrl A, then open Font; all the Effects boxes are blue with a white dash inside, not sure what that means, but if you click twice they go to a white box, which is what you want for all of them, including Hidden. Then OK and that's it. Of course, if you only want to unhide some stuff, a variant of your method may be superior, depending if you can actually see what you are unhiding in advance. I use Word 2019.
Cheers
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