Text in a merged-away table cell

How the text is hidden

<w:vMerge/> without w:val="restart" marks a cell as a continuation of the merged region above it. ECMA-376 §17.4.85 says only the first cell of the region displays. The continuation cell's runs stay in the part and are never drawn.

Why a model still reads it

python-docx and docx2txt both return a continuation cell's runs, so it reaches a model on two of the commonest DOCX-to-text paths. mammoth filters it, which is why one integrator measured this as not reaching them while it still reaches everyone else.

What we do about it

The parser walks w:tc elements and marks the range when the first w:vMerge inside it is not restart. The check runs after the stronger declarations, so a cell that is also hidden or sub-readable reports the more specific reason. The reason is merged-away; the rule fires at high with action flag. Word's own Merge Cells concatenates content rather than leaving it behind, so a continuation cell holding text was hand-edited.

How often it fires

0% of open-data portal DOCX — 150 real government publications, written in Word (genre: government, NOT contracts), measured 2026-08-18.

This is an alert-volume number and nothing else. It says how often the alarm sounds on documents as found — not how often it is right, and not whether what it found was harmless. Documents as found may themselves carry concealment. Read it against the population named above rather than as a property of documents in general.