Posted by tribeofa | Posted in MS Word | Posted on 15-11-2011
Someone asked how to hide certain data in a Word table. Unfortunately, a Word table isn’t like Excel; you can’t choose “hide column” and be done with it. There are some workarounds, however.
1) Create your data in Excel and import it into your Word doc one of two ways:
A) Choose “Insert,” then choose “Object.” When the window comes up, scroll down to “Microsoft Excel Worksheet.” Click “OK.” This will open Excel. Anything that you do in Excel will show up in the Word doc, hidden columns and rows and all.
B) Create the worksheet in Excel, save it, the follow the steps above, but choose “From file” and choose your file. This will embed your worksheet in your Word document. When you want to hide columns or rows, double clicking will take you into Excel to make the changes, which will be reflected in the Word doc.
Don’t want to use Excel? There are other options:
2) You can format text as hidden. If you choose to hide the text in a column, the column will remain, but will be blank. If you do it on a row, the row will actually be hidden. How to do this:
Select the column or row. Select “Format” then “Text” (or the appropriate panes in 2007 or later). In the window that comes up you’ll see several checkboxes. The last one is “hidden.” Check it and click “OK.”
Keep in mind that unless you protect your document, there’s nothing to stop the person at the other end from unhiding that text, but the same is true of the Excel document.
3) You can make your font white (or whatever the background color is) and protect the document.
4) You can buy a redaction plug-in or use the highlighter tool set to black and pretend you’re a censor.
