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I would like to share a Google Docs to other people but certain sections in the document are not complete, so I would like to hide them such that when they view or even edit the document they cannot see the sections.

Creating a copy of the entire document is cumbersome so that is not what I'm after.

This is possible from within Google Docs?

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  • Currently there is an option to protect range which you have not finished by going to Tools -> Protect Range &sheet.You should select the range which you need to protect and then set the permission
    – BDRSuite
    Jan 23, 2015 at 22:22
  • 2
    Sorry, but that does not apply. Note in title of the question I said "Google document", not "Google spreadsheet".
    – bgoodr
    Jan 25, 2015 at 15:20

5 Answers 5

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Short Answer

At this time Google documents do not have a way to hide content.

Alternatives

An alternative is to publish to the web the document before you start to work in the sections that want to hide.

Another alternative is create a copy of the document and remove the content to share, then share the copy instead of the original.

References

Docs editors Help

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You can effectively hide text by moving it to another document, then inserting a link in the original document.

For example, you want to hide the details of the deprecated version, but still make them available if desired.

    Deprecated version of product:
      text to be hidden
    Current version of product:
      ipso lorem ...

Move the "text to be hidden" to a new Google Doc. Back in the original file, highlight the "Deprecated..." line, from the menu choose Insert->Link and select the new Google Doc. You have now created a hyperlink to the "hidden" text. It's not ideal from a workflow point of view; but at least it works pretty well.

Ideally an add-on could be written that pops up the hyperlinked text when you hover over the link. A nice little project; maybe I'll do it when I find the time.

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Change the highlight color to match the text color then change it back when you want to see

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You may have a Google Docs document that you will be issuing to end users as a PDF. You can put hidden text, for example a Version Control section, in a Comment. It will not be copied to the PDF.

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If your use case more "hide this non-useful thing so it doesn't take up so much space" and less "hide this because I don't want other people to see it", you could potentially:

Make the font size 1 for whichever sections you want to "hide", which reduces the space it takes up down to a fraction of what it was.

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