If you want to print a document without some text showing up, you can do that with hidden text (although make sure you haven’t turned on the option to print hidden text). If you don’t want someone to read something you’ve written, either remove the text entirely or don’t send the document to them. So it’s not a security measure, and you should never rely on hidden text to prevent a determined person from reading something in your document. Instead of removing the text, Word applies a formatting mark that means “don’t display this text.”īecause hidden text is just standard text with formatting marks applied, anyone who can edit the document can search for hidden text and display it. Word hides text by using formatting marks-the same way you’d format text as bold or italic.