Since you asked for suggestions and not hard answers, I will take a stab -

Could you use and embed an Excel spread sheet with the columns hidden
instead of using a Word Table?


--
Greg Maxey/Word MVP
See:
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tips.htm
For some helpful tips using Word.

KGZ wrote:
I have a Word 2000 document with a table (3 columns; numerous rows).
Each column/row has text in it. We want to "hide" the last 2 columns
of text before distributing electronically for edits. We don't want
to delete these columns because multiple people will be
adding/deleting rows before returning it. Thus, we can't simply save
and keep an original, because the rows/columns will not match up. Is
it possible to hide columns that contain text in a Word 2000 table?
I know all about hiding columns in Excel, & it just seems like it
would have been considered a helpful option in Word tables as well,
but we can't figure it out. We have scoured online help, etc. to no
avail. Any suggestions? Thanks so much...