This is a hack and I haven’t used it, I’ve simply noticed it.
If you click inside the element and delete the placeholder text, when you exit the element, the element itself will be deleted. However, if you then undo your change, the element will return and the placeholder text will be gone. The element will then be empty if the connected data field is empty but will display data if data is present. On the downside, the element won’t be very visible to you in edit mode.