For running text – not sure about tables – you could:
- place cursor in paragraph
- press F8 four times (or triple-click) to select paragraph
there are lots of other F8 tricks for selecting longer blocks of text, too
- Ctrl+D, Alt+H, Return to hide the selected paragraph
When you're done, Ctrl+A to select the whole document and then Ctrl+spacebar to clear the local override (hidden text) you've applied.
note: clearing all local overrides may spring surprises, depending on how styled the original document is