Word 2007 remove information from document onscreen - vba

Question

I am working with sensitive information in Word and would like to remove some of the information that breaches privacy legislation. This information is variable, so I cannot do a simple replace. I was able to remove the information from the file after saving it as a text file and looping through the file and saving it to a new text file. The lines where the information occurs always starts with the same information, so that is what I used to trigger the removal of the private info. Ideally, I would like to be able to do this without saving the file first. I am a little familiar with VBA in word, but this is beyond my skillset at the moment.
sorry for the ambiguity....the information that needs to be replaced is variable, similar to a Social Security Number, thus a simple search and replace is not possible. A sample is provided below. What I am looking for is when the beginning of the line contains ID#, the first 4 characters of the ID number be either x'd out or replaced with a blank. The last three characters would still be visible for identification purposes.
-INQFS-07A-26-------------------------------------DATE:111018-162442-
ID#: XXXXXXX NAME: XXXXXX, XXXX LOCATION : XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX NUMBER : XXX PAGE: 1
--------------C U R R E N T -------------- OPENING BALANCE --------------S A V I N G S -------------- C A N T E E N
CASH HOLDS FREE BALANCE CASH HOLDS FREE BALANCE
306.52 7.50 299.02 DATE 11/10/11 91.68 0.00 91.68 90.00

Answer 1

This seems to do what I want it to do.
Sub MaskIDNUM()
'
' MaskIDNUM Macro
' Blank out first four characters of the ID# in a printout
'
Selection.WholeStory
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "ID#: ????"
.Replacement.Text = "ID# "
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindAsk
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub