How to Hide Parts of a Google Doc While Screen Sharing

Google Docs is where a lot of real work lives: offer letters, contract drafts, meeting notes with frank opinions. You often need to show one section of a document while keeping the rest private. Docs has no "presenter mode" for hiding text, so here are your options.

Option 1: Make a trimmed copy

File → Make a copy, delete the sensitive parts, and share the copy. This is the safest approach for a document you’ll show many times, but it goes out of date the moment the original changes, and it’s slow when you only need to hide a line or two.

Option 2: Hide the interface clutter

• Close the comments sidebar, which shows people’s names and sometimes blunt feedback.
• Collapse the document outline if headings reveal more than you want.
• Switch to Viewing mode so no suggestions or edits appear on screen.

Option 3: Blur the sensitive text in place

When the private detail sits right in the middle of the page, like a salary figure in an offer letter or a client name in a proposal, blurring it in place is the fastest fix. The rest of the document stays readable and live.

1. Open the document and scroll to the section you’ll present.
2. Click the BlurSite icon and choose area blur.
3. Drag a rectangle over each line or table cell you want hidden.
4. Adjust intensity until the text is unreadable, then start sharing.

Which option to use

One-off call? Blur in place. Showing the same document to outside audiences again and again? Make a trimmed copy. And whichever you choose, close the comments sidebar first.