Discussion on:

Office Challenge: Why won't Word hide index tags?

In the Word options dialog box, under the display options and the "Always show these formatting marks on the screen," the user has probably selected "Hidden text." This option keeps the index entries showing even when paragraph markers are turned off. Unchecking that box should fix the problem.

I think you just need to select the text - CTRL+A / Right Click and Toggle Field Codes

It might also be worth noting that revealing a document's Formatting is not the same thing as revealing its underlying Field Code. The former reveals space, paragraph, tabs, page break, manual line break etc. marks. Its keyboard shortcut is Shift+Ctrl+8. The latter shows areas of the document that are populated or controlled by field code, such as index tags, page numbers, document filepath, etc. Its keyboard shortcut is Alt+F9.

My question was similar to this one, so I read this information. Then I did some snooping around in Word and found my solution.

My question: How to hide the index tags in my document but not the paragraph marks, tabs and spaces?

The solution: I discovered that to control what appears when you click the paragraph button in the ribbon is to do this:

Click:
Office button > Word Options > Display

Under "Always show these formatting marks on the screen," you can specify what is shown
and hidden when you click the paragraph button on the ribbon.

I de-selected Hidden text, because my "hidden" index tags throw off the page breaks,
text formatting, etc. But I kept Tab characters, Spaces, and Paragraph marks.