Microsoft Office Forums - View Single Post - [Solved] Can you prevent parts of a Word document from printing?

macropod · 04-04-2012, 02:12 PM

Hi Mark,

To edit the field, you can simply press Alt-F9 to expose the field code before editing, then Alt-F9, F9 when you're done.

You can't use a Style for what you're after, though you could format the text as hidden. The problem with that, though, is that the display and printing of hidden text is controlled at the application level, not at the document level, so you'd have no control over what gets seen or printed by a particular user.

You could use a macro. This typically entails using either a bookmark or some other form of marker to delineate the instructions. Bookmarks are fragile, being susceptible to accidental deletion, truncation or exapnsion. Instead, you could use a table or Section breaks to delineate the instructions. A table is probably the simplest to implement. A potential problem with macros is that your users must allow them to run, a decision they make when opening the document, or which they might make by configuring Word to never allow them to run. If they don't allow the macro to run, everything will be printed.