How to toggle content control boundaries (tags) from appearing on screen or in printed documents? Word for the Mac.

Dear Chris,

Good day!!

I understand you would like to turn off/on the purple graphic boundaries to the edges of the content control and to my knowledge, the purple graphic boundaries can be turned off by disabling the Design Mode in the Developer, but I am sorry to convey that Word app on the Mac doesn’t have the Design Mode to be turned off.

In this scenario on using the Legacy Forms in the Word document on Mac, I suggest you to refer the replies shared by MVP’s in this thread: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/microsoft-word-for-mac-forms-getting-into-and-out/4bdb10ba-c4b6-4278-883b-3e5f3fdcc038 

Moreover, I also suggest you add your valuable feedback in the Word Feedback Community: https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/forum/fb6d67e3-301c-ec11-b6e7-0022481f8472 

Sorry for the inconvenience caused and thanks for your patience.

Have a good day!!

Best Regards,

Sophia

Your first screen shot shows the Content Control set to display start and end tags.

This is easily fixed under the Developer Tab in properties in the Windows version of Word.

I know of no way to adjust this on a Mac using the user interface. The controls are not there.

It is possible to do with vba.

Content Controls for macOS by John Korchok

The following macro will give what is called a Bounding Box which will display the title when the control is selected and otherwise not.

Sub ContentControlNoTags()

    ' Charles Kenyon 2023-04-26

    ' https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-to-toggle-content-control-boundaries-from/6cfdc987-a663-4577-8a14-238dfac217bc

    '

    Dim iCount As Long

    With ActiveDocument

        For iCount = 1 To .ContentControls.Count

            .ContentControls(iCount).Appearance = wdContentControlBoundingBox

        Next iCount

    End With

End Sub

If you change wdContentControlBoundingBox to 2, nothing will display except what is in the Content Control, that is, it will not show the title even when selected. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/word.wdcontentcontrolappearance

The following macro toggles the tags. It could be attached to a keyboard shortcut stored in your template with the macro.

Sub ContentControlTagsToggle()

    ' Charles Kenyon 2023-04-26

    ' https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-to-toggle-content-control-boundaries-from/6cfdc987-a663-4577-8a14-238dfac217bc

    '

    ' Toggles tags on Content Controls

    '

    Dim iCount As Long

    With ActiveDocument

        For iCount = 1 To .ContentControls.Count

            If .ContentControls(iCount).Appearance = wdContentControlTags Then

                .ContentControls(iCount).Appearance = wdContentControlHidden

                Else: .ContentControls(iCount).Appearance = wdContentControlTags

            End If

        Next iCount

    End With

End Sub

Again, I think you are better off just changing it permanently to the Bounding Box.

• Word:mac - Install a Macro by MVPs Daiya Mitchell and John McGhie
• Content Controls for macOS by John Korchok

You do NOT want to switch to legacy form fields. This puts extreme limits on what people can do with the document, including spell checking.