w:specVanish (Special Hidden Text)

Marks text as hidden in a way that overrides the Show Hidden Text display setting, keeping the text permanently invisible to users.

Parent elements

w:rPr

Description

w:specVanish is a toggle property that hides text unconditionally. Unlike w:vanish, which can be overridden by the “Show Hidden Text” view option (w:showHiddenText in settings), w:specVanish keeps text hidden even when that option is active.

It is defined in ECMA-376 Part 1 §17.3.2.37.

This is used for structural content — such as deleted list-paragraph markers in numbered lists — that must never appear as visible text.

Attributes

Attribute	Type	Possible Values	Description
`w:val`	`ST_OnOff`	`true`, `false`, `1`, `0`, `on`, `off`	Permanently hides the text. Omit to inherit.

Examples

<!-- Structural hidden run that remains invisible regardless of display settings -->
<w:r>
  <w:rPr>
    <w:specVanish/>
  </w:rPr>
  <w:t></w:t>
</w:r>

using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Wordprocessing;

var run = new Run(
    new RunProperties(new SpecVanish()),
    new Text(string.Empty)
);

Notes

w:specVanish is almost exclusively produced by Word itself for internal structural reasons; it is rarely authored manually.
w:vanish is the normal “hidden text” property that users can reveal with “Show All Formatting Marks”.
Text marked with w:specVanish still participates in the document structure (e.g. paragraph markers) but is not rendered.