Talking to Yourself

If you are like me, when you write you make notes to yourself so you don't forget parts of the manuscript that may need more work or so you can jog your memory. Hidden text is great for this purpose, because you can hide your notes at any time so that others don't see them on the screen or in a printout. I found that I added enough notes that I wanted to create a macro that would insert a paragraph prior to the one in which I am working, and then format the paragraph as hidden text so I can enter my note. The result is the AddNote macro, which creates a red-text hidden paragraph:

Sub AddNote()
    Selection.MoveDown Unit:=wdParagraph, Count:=1
    Selection.MoveUp Unit:=wdParagraph, Count:=1
    Selection.TypeParagraph
    Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
    Selection.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("Normal")
    With Selection.Font
        .Name = "Arial"
        .Size = 11
        .Bold = True
        .Italic = False
        .Underline = wdUnderlineNone
        .StrikeThrough = False
        .DoubleStrikeThrough = False
        .Outline = False
        .Emboss = False
        .Shadow = False
        .Hidden = True
        .SmallCaps = False
        .AllCaps = False
        .ColorIndex = wdRed
        .Engrave = False
        .Superscript = False
        .Subscript = False
        .Spacing = 0
        .Scaling = 100
        .Position = 0
        .Kerning = 0
        .Animation = wdAnimationNone
    End With
    Selection.TypeText Text:="Note: "
End Sub

I assign this macro to a shortcut key, which makes it very easy to use. You could, if you prefer, assign it to the Quick Access Toolbar.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (12888) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Talking to Yourself.