I have an extremely long document in Word 2010. I would like to be add the functionality to show & hide paragraphs, parts of tables, etc. Is there a simple way of doing this without extensive macros?

For running text – not sure about tables – you could:

1. place cursor in paragraph
2. press F8 four times (or triple-click) to select paragraph
   there are lots of other F8 tricks for selecting longer blocks of text, too
3. 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

If you have the paragraphs formatted using styles and the styles are different for the paragraphs you want hidden from those used in the paragraphs you want displayed, you could change the paragraph style definitions to reflect font formatting of hidden text in those you want hidden.

You could easily create macros to change these style definitions back and forth and attach them to keyboard shortcuts.

Also, if the parts to be hidden are at different level numbers, Outline view can hide paragraphs below certain level numbers. Again, this depends on your having set your text up using styles designed for this.

It really depends on how properly you have structured the document. If, as Charles mentions, you fully use styles, then you can take advantage of that.

It also depends on what is your actual purpose. Is it navigational? Is this to be able to get to various places? Bookmarks and other things would help with this. You could also use a userform with things listed on it, and then selecting something would either hide them (as requested) or perhaps jump to that location.

What do you actually need?