If there's a place you can stash it where you don't mind it taking up space,
you can format the text as Font Color: White.

I suspect that a text box might not work, anyway, since Word often doesn't
"see" text in a text box, but you could put the text (formatted white) in a
borderless frame stuck out in the margin somewhere.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

wrote in message
oups.com...
Can anyone think of a good way to hide some text without using the
hidden text font? I also don't want to use a macro solution, for
reasons I care not to get into right now. The text in question can be
in a table cell, but I don't really want it to take up space -- or at
least not much -- no matter how much text is there.

The best way I've come up with so far is to put the text into a text
box and set the height and width to zero. That works, but it becomes
tricky to find the blasted thing afterwards. One way to find it later
is to apply a particular style to the text before shrinking the text
box, and then do a find for text of that style after it's been
shrunken. At least then you can spot the handles of the text box so
you can temporarily resize it to a reasonable size to work with, and
then reshrink it again when you're finished. That might be OK if I
can't find another technique that would be easier to maintain.

Why in the world am I doing this? I'm creating a template for a group
of people that I work with. The text box will contain field codes for
setting document properties, and I don't want people seeing or messing
with them. Without a protected document, I realize that this isn't
entirely risk free, but if I stash the text box away in a table cell
that people normally shouldn't be messing with, this shouldn't be an
issue.

Why not just use the hidden text font? I might actually just end up
using that. However, I kind of had plans to use hidden text font for
imbedding instructions to the user of the template (with the option for
viewing hidden text turned on, but the option for printing hidden text
turned of, of course). I could also use the comment feature for user
instructions, but Word's comment presentation options are less than
ideal for this purpose, and I also wouldn't want my comments to
interfere with any comments that the user might decide to use.

This isn't a burning issue for me, but I figured someone else might
have other clever ideas. I'm using Word 2003, by the way.

Actually, a text box does indeed work for updating the field codes in
question, as I tested that. I appreciate that you mentioned your
concern in this regard, however.

I forgot to mention in my earlier post that I actually did try setting
the font color to white. I saw that you had in fact suggested that in
another news group post, so I at least did a fair amount of homework
before posting! :-)

Setting the font color to white actually does work, but only to a
point. The main problem that I found is that the spelling and grammar
checkers will flag anything they don't like in this text with their
jagged red and green underlines. It is in fact possible that the
result of the field codes in question could be flagged by these
checkers. That ends up looking odd, because you see these jagged
underlines out in the middle of nowhere!

Also, I figure that if the text box is left at a large size, that would
increase the chance of a user accidentally happening across it, and
then messing with it. The chance of this would be decreased if I
actually add the text box while editing the header and footer area, but
the spelling and grammar checker problem still persists there as well.
The same issues seem to exist whether the text box is a true text box
or a frame.

Anyway, I certainly appreciate your reply. Getting a reply from a
seasoned Word pro like you at least gives me the satisfaction of
knowing that there likely isn't a better way to do this. Thanks much!

Format the text as "Do not check spelling or grammar." The easiest way to do
this is to create a character style formatted as Default Paragraph Font + Do
not check spelling or grammar (in the Modify Style dialog, choose Format |
Language), then apply this style to your text as needed.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

wrote in message
oups.com...
Actually, a text box does indeed work for updating the field codes in
question, as I tested that. I appreciate that you mentioned your
concern in this regard, however.

I forgot to mention in my earlier post that I actually did try setting
the font color to white. I saw that you had in fact suggested that in
another news group post, so I at least did a fair amount of homework
before posting! :-)

Setting the font color to white actually does work, but only to a
point. The main problem that I found is that the spelling and grammar
checkers will flag anything they don't like in this text with their
jagged red and green underlines. It is in fact possible that the
result of the field codes in question could be flagged by these
checkers. That ends up looking odd, because you see these jagged
underlines out in the middle of nowhere!

Also, I figure that if the text box is left at a large size, that would
increase the chance of a user accidentally happening across it, and
then messing with it. The chance of this would be decreased if I
actually add the text box while editing the header and footer area, but
the spelling and grammar checker problem still persists there as well.
The same issues seem to exist whether the text box is a true text box
or a frame.

Anyway, I certainly appreciate your reply. Getting a reply from a
seasoned Word pro like you at least gives me the satisfaction of
knowing that there likely isn't a better way to do this. Thanks much!